American cowboy mythology

I appreciate the ephemeral quality of paper. Paper discolors quickly, as if bruised by time. Things that proudly wear their scars, like wood, rust and paper, intimidate me with how openly they share their journey. The passing of time and doom of constant change can hurt one’s soul, yet paper’s weathered surface hides no shame for its audience and allows us to scrutinize its every pore.

Paper is frail and simple, yet grins with the overbearing conceptual weight of its written content. In this world, paper is tangible time. I collect basic newspapers, finding them to be fantastic artifacts that can transform us to a world suddenly expired and forgotten. Smoke and mirrors can’t riddle your conscious in the way that words, headlines and illustrations invade your imagination. Advertising sprawls to every corner of the page not to sell you a product, but to promote the consumption of a perceived lifestyle. I wheat-pasted life-sized figures onto recycled barn wood pallets in an attempt to recreate the feeling of a billboard. Small illustrations, layered on the wall in black frames, are pencil sketches that I digitally layered with found water-stained paper, trying to include the idea of printed media. Romanticized illustrations and their softly spoken tales soak into the blunt fist of reality, transcending into mythical ideas.

My rugged portraits of bull riders are an attempt to render my near reverential admiration for American cowboy values. Even after burning, tearing and scuffing the paper, it still shines with images of self-dependence, maturity and honesty, which were values that held young men together like glue as they rode the hazardous edge of the new frontier. Bull riding, the game of a cowboy, is a sport where scoring is split 50/50 between the effort of man and beast. It’s an archaic equality where animal holds a competitive edge with man. A cowboy can out-perform a bull, or a bull can buck off a man, but for the greatest score, both creatures must excel. Yet, today’s sport is an egregious money-making spectacle, marred with twisting spotlights, pyrotechnics and stereo surround-sound. The arena transformed the once ordinary lifestyle into a new fashion, culture and men of greedy values.

Like the ghosts on the walls of ancient ruin, the American cowboy is now another page in history’s book of myths and legends.

Bill Goloski, B.F.A.,