Longtime New Mexico artist Gary Niblett receives the retrospective treatment at the Carlsbad Museum November 5, 2022 through February 4, 2023.
Gary Niblett: His Life & Art
November 5, 2022–February 4, 2023
Carlsbad Museum
Gary Niblett: His Life & Art is the first retrospective of the storied career of New Mexico artist Gary Niblett. Featuring more than fifty pieces of his Western art, European paintings, early Hanna-Barbera animation work, and more, the exhibition spans Niblett’s entire career and is on view now through February 4, 2023.
Born in 1943 and raised in Carlsbad, New Mexico, Niblett spent his childhood immersed in the outdoors of the American West. As a high school student, area ranchers paid him to paint portraits of their horses, perhaps offering an antecedent window into what was to come. In 1963, after attending Eastern New Mexico University, Niblett moved to Los Angeles and enrolled in the ArtCenter College of Design.
He soon took a job with Hanna-Barbera animation studios, where he worked as a background artist on Scooby Doo, The Jetsons, Charlotte’s Web, and more. Through this work, he further developed his skills and knowledge of lighting and color as well as design and composition. In 1973, he left the studios to focus exclusively on his fine art practice and returned to New Mexico, where he started to gain national recognition.
In 1976, Niblett was invited to join the Cowboy Artists of America, and the next year won the CAA Silver Medal for Oil with his painting Gold Fever. The accolades continued with awards and honors throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and into the new millennium. Niblett’s work has been exhibited the world over, including in Moscow, Beijing, Taiwan, and at the Royal Watercolor Society in London.
Including many of his Western and Native American paintings, this retrospective will survey Niblett’s diverse work: from his early days as a burgeoning young artist, the time he spent in California under the employ of Hanna-Barbera, later European street scenes, and his more recent New Mexico landscapes. The exhibition has been organized jointly by Gary Niblett and the Carlsbad Museum.
carlsbadmuseum.org
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