Jeremy Booth may have spent most of his life in Kentucky, but his true love is the American West. One look at his artwork is all it takes to see that this talented artist’s heart lies with the ranches and rodeos of the Western states.
Booth grew up in Louisville, often riding horses on his father’s property after his parents divorced when he was a kid. But it wasn’t until he spent time in Southern California as a young adult that he became hooked on the Western lifestyle.
“My love for the West grew when I lived out in California in my early 20s,” says Booth. “I made my way out to the desert and fell in love with it. Later, when I got married, my wife and I started going out to Arizona and Utah. We both really love the landscapes we’d see there.”
Starting a career in commercial illustration, Booth’s minimalist style remained consistent, although the subject matter differed according to his clients’ needs, and included everything from cityscapes to abstracts. When he later shifted to being a fine artist a couple of years ago, he needed to discover what his subject matter would be.
“Based off of my love for the landscape of the desert and the West, as well as seeing what artists like Mark Maggiori were doing, plus my interest in cowboy culture, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to try a series of Western art,” says Booth. “At the time, I thought it’d be fun to explore. I didn’t really know how long the series would be or where it would take me. And then I got hooked. I love the imagery, and I love the culture of the West.”
Early in Booth’s career as a fine artist, he and his wife spent a weekend at the Kansas ranch of a fellow artist and photographed cowboys at work.
“We were able to meet some of the community and capture great reference material,” he says. “That experience really elevated my craft and my artwork. Since then, I’ve just decided this is my lane, and this is what I’m pursuing.”
The Process
These days Booth’s wife, Tabitha, a professional photographer, provides many of the images he uses as references for his paintings. Booth also takes photographs himself that he uses to create his final pieces. The couple travels to the West as often as they can, looking for inspiration.
“Last spring, we went to Sombrero Ranch in Colorado,” he says. “It’s thousands of acres, and we spent three days there, photographing cowboys, longhorns, and everyday life on the ranch. It’s those instances where I get my inspiration. You come home and sort through all the material—thousands of images—and figure out which ones tell a really good story that could be done well as a painting. And then I get to work.”
To create his pieces, Booth uses a combination of digital and traditional painting methods.
“I guess you could call me a hybrid artist in a sense,” he says. “I have a collector base that just purchases digital art from me, and then there are the other works that I paint by hand on a canvas. I started as a digital artist, and that’s where my process lay when I was a commercial artist. That’s still where my process starts today, even if the outcome is a physical piece.”
Booth works by taking his photographic reference material and then creating rough sketches to build out the composition of the piece and how the landscape is going to work. He then uses this as a guide to create the digital version of the painting in grayscale.
“In my mind, if I can create the lighting and everything in grayscale, then it will work with color,” he says. “I usually start with one specific color and start building on that until I come up with a color palette I really like. From there, I take it over to the canvas and I paint it with acrylics.”
Digital and canvas works by Booth cover a variety of Western subjects, including cowboys working cattle, rodeo riders on broncs and bulls, and scenes that could be right from the Old West. Using minimalism that focuses on iconic ranch life, Booth uses dark shadows and bright colors to create dramatic scenes. By exploring negative space in his paintings, he lures viewers into the ruggedness of the Western landscape.
Inspiration
Booth is inspired in his work not only by Western landscapes and the cowboy lifestyle, but also by artists who have come before him. He cites Maynard Dixon (1875-1946), the famed Western artist whose work hangs in museums throughout the West; Ed Mell (1942-2024), an American artist who was inspired by the Colorado Plateau and Sonoran Desert; Mark Maggiori, a contemporary Western artist; and Billy Schenck, a pop artist focusing on Western themes.
“Maynard Dixon is pretty great, and Ed Mell showed me that his geometric approach to landscapes was kind of similar to how I draw them,” says Booth. “And Billy Schenck—you could say he’s like the godfather of Western pop art. He showed me the way I approach illustration translates well to the West. These three guys really encouraged me in a sense. Their work made me feel like there’s room for me here.”
Booth is making a name for himself right along the artists who inspired him, with his work soon to be exhibited in a solo show at the Square One gallery in St. Louis, Mo., in February. His digital pieces are also being sold by Christie’s Art House.
To see more of Jeremy Booth’s work, visit his website here.
This article about Jeremy Booth appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of Western Life Today magazine. Click here to subscribe!
