Art Walk,Telluride Gallery of Fine Art: Liepke back in town with knockout show

04 Jul Art Walk,Telluride Gallery of Fine Art: Liepke back in town with knockout show

[click “Play” to hear Skip Liepke’s conversation with Susan]

Malcolm “Skip” Liepke’s second one-man show opens at the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art, 130 East Colorado Avenue, Thursday, July 7, 5:30 – 8:00 p.m., in sync with Telluride Arts’ First Thursday Art Walk, showing off the “Best Of” Telluride’s fine art and retail scene.

If you missed it, the artist’s first show was a doozy: wall-to-wall pulchritude and sensuality confronting us with looks that would melt steel, rendered by a  painter who is an unapologetic realist.

For his encore, Liepke brings us a variation on the theme of his narrative – a celebration of flesh, features, fabric that conspire to reveal the inner life of his subjects – thankfully delivering his “harem” unscathed and on a silver platter with the same Caravaggian frankness and intensity and the same rich textures that inhabited the canvasses we were treated to last year. And those beautiful faces: surfaces in change that compose themselves formally as index of traits. Features work collectively as suggestions that personalities are liable to change in the blink of an eye. Look away, then look back: who knows who you will meet this time in the guise of a beautiful and mysterious stranger.

Regardless of the spin Liepke puts on his work, haute fashion this time around, he remains an unrivaled recorder of feminine beauty, luscious and uncensored. His bravura brushwork is as loose and juicy as his idol Velasquez, an extension of his no-nonsense Midwestern roots. This latest body of work brings excitement to the scrutiny of light and shade on the bodice of a dress, the flash of an earring or an eye, ruby red lips, and smooth, lustrous skin, all modeled to the point of overt seduction.

Liepke is known to quote a legend scrawled on the back of a Rembrandt: “I yield to no one.” But we, the spectators in the thrall of Liepke’s sirens yield once again to the artist’s smoking brush.

To learn more about the life of the artist and his influences, follow this link to our original post and interview from Liepke’s first show in town.

And now, click the “play” button to listen to the update.