Wall Street Journal highlights Denver artist William Matthews

(Photo: Courtesy of Denver Art Museum)

National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada.

In his story, which covers everything from Montana's poet laureate to "cowboy songsters," reporter Andy Rieber highlights the work of Denver artist William Matthews, whose solo show is currently running at the Denver Art Museum. 

Then there are artists like watercolorist William Matthews. The subject of an exhibition at the Denver Art Museum through May 17, Mr. Matthews claims no cowboy bona fides except a passion to faithfully represent the culture and scenes he encounters in the cowboy world and in the rural West. His work was the focus of a documentary (produced by Amie Knox) screened at the Gathering, which follows Mr. Matthews as he explores remote Great Basin ranches and captures cowboys, landscapes and structures in his lucid, naturalistic style. Of particular interest was a series of paintings of the Gamble Ranch Granary, a looming agricultural structure in northeast Nevada that Matthews brings to unexpected life by rendering it in shifting variations of light, angle and season.