ABOUT EXHIBITION : Wild America
Cris Worley Fine Arts is delighted to announce our second solo exhibition featuring the latest works of Johnny DeFeo. The exhibition, titled Wild America, will open to the public on October 19, and run through November 30, 2024. This artist will give brief remarks at 5:45pm.
Johnny DeFeo’s new exhibition, Wild America, is aptly named for his infatuation with the last remaining unspoiled landscapes of the United States. The core of DeFeo’s painting practice is working in plein air, painting in the outdoors amidst the beauty of America’s most pristine landscapes. Following in the footsteps of artists such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, and Albert Bierstadt, DeFeo delights in documenting American public lands through his paintings and expands upon the work of such artists with commentary on the negative effects of human intervention.
Most recently, DeFeo has been bringing his plein air painting practice indoors, setting up his easel to paint taxidermy collections in unexpected places such as the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and Cabela’s Outfitters. An extension of his interiors series, DeFeo is subtly introducing symbols into his work that act as disruptors to the utopic residential spaces he creates. For DeFeo, these scenes of taxidermy collections nod to the strained relationship between humankind and wild animals. Once full of life, these majestic creatures have become trophies- inert, powerless, and decorative. With both the interiors and taxidermy paintings, the artist points to humankind’s struggle with a desire to control and dominate the natural world, even while we also hold a deep love and respect for it.
Together, the works in Wild America ask viewers to confront our relationship to the great outdoors. Be it wild and revelatory, or protective and reverent, DeFeo encourages us to feel deeply and celebrate passionately.

ABOUT ARTISTS : Johnny DeFeo
Johnny DeFeo (b. 1985) received an MFA in painting from the University of Colorado in 2017. Shortly after graduating he co-founded Adventure Painting, a traveling artist residency, alongside painter Aaron Zulpo. The Adventure Painting residency takes artists out of their studios and into America's most beautiful locations with the goal of expanding the visual lexicon of landscape painting. Adventure Painting was selected as an Armory Show off-site project in 2021, and featured in the New York Times. DeFeo’s aesthetic is wild and playful, utilizing a dose of humor to create objects that illuminate the connections between beauty both quintessential and manufactured. His work consists primarily of landscape scenes, many of which include animals. Often, the perspective expressed in these scenes is that of the animal, shifting the subject away from a human vantage point and revealing the mysteries of the natural world. Imagining that the creatures inhabiting America’s wilderness could be storytellers through objects and images the way that humans can, these objects portray the natural world with a tender perspective, and with mystical and legendary qualities.

---

    Johnny DeFeo