'Masters of Drawing' Exhibition at Medicine Man Gallery

Drawing represents the “dribbling and shooting” of art to use a sports metaphor. It’s the foundational skill upon which all others are built.

You’d be hard pressed to find a great artist from history who wasn’t an exceptional draftsman – the fancy word for drawer. Or woman. No matter where their art making took them, be that abstraction or minimalism or even sculpture, the greats could all draw.

Picasso was brilliant with pen and pencil as a teen. Brilliant. His ability to successfully go on and break all the rules of painting stemmed from his mastery of the basics of drawing.

Andy Warhol was a superb draftsman despite what his famous screenprints might suggest. He began his career in New York as an in-demand illustrator for fashion companies, particularly drawing shoes.

Jean-Michel Basquiat began as a graffiti artist and rose to fine art prominence with what looked like scrawlings, but he too, was a great drawer.

The only artist from history I’ve ever come across described as anything less than exceptional at drawing was Jackson Pollock.

Drawing is both a talent and a skill. Like speed or strength or a singing voice, everyone is born somewhere on a spectrum of innate drawing ability with genius at one end–Albrecht Dürer–to completely untalented at the other–me. Everyone can also be trained to improve their natural drawing talent.

When natural talent is combined with rigorous training and decades of practice, masters of drawing emerge. Opening February 15, 2025, at Mark Sublette’s Medicine Man Gallery and The Maynard Dixon and Native American Art Museum next door, the “Masters of Drawing” exhibition and sale displays drawings from 47 leading contemporary Western artists. Masters.

"Masters of Drawing" exhibition view from Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery.

Photo credit: Callum Geoffrion 

Among the heavyweight lineup: Tony Abeyta, Duke Beardsley, Shonto Begay, Thomas Blackshear II, Stephen Datz, Glenn Dean, Logan Maxwell Hagege, Donna Howell-Sickles, John Moyers, Terri Kelly Moyers, Howard Post, Kim Wiggins, and Dennis Ziemienski.

While their paintings run the gamut from nearly abstract landscapes to figurative realism, each of the artists has a foundation in drawing, typically traced back to when they were three, four, and five years old.

“The goal of this show is to have the artists think about (drawing), to value their own drawings more than they may have, and the general public too,” Medicine Man Gallery founder and owner Mark Sublette said on his “Art Dealer Diaries” podcast episode previewing the show. “This probably comes from Maynard Dixon because I value his drawing so much.”

Dixon and all the legendary forefathers of Western art were superior draftsmen. Russell, Remington, Bierstadt, the Taos Society of Artists. Masters.

“(Drawing is) less celebrated (than painting), but that doesn’t make it less essential,” Josh Gibson, one of the featured “Masters,” told Sublette on the episode.

A special treat of the show is a handful of drawings by iconic Arizona painter Ed Mell who passed away a year ago. Some of these drawings include his handwritten remarks, reminders for how the drawings would lead to future paintings. They are a remarkable window into his artistic mind, a view rarely seen as most artists are not in the practice of displaying or selling their drawings.

Ed Mell (1942-2024) - Shungopavi Storm

“The artist's hand is in a drawing so definitely, there's nowhere to hide,” Whitney Gardner, another “Masters of Drawing” artist, told Sublette on his podcast. “It’s your exact mark. Even in the process of making my work for the show, I thought, ‘I'm going to do charcoal, I'm going to do something different.’ I didn't feel like I was coming through enough. I was throwing drawings away. I had to boil it back down to how do I draw every day? Most of the time that's in a sketchbook with a mechanical pencil. I thought, ‘Okay, I'm just going to see where I can go with making something so pure, very genuine, and very vulnerable.’ That's where I saw myself come through.”

Some of the show’s artists draw every day. Others primarily only as preparations for paintings. All of them have a unique artistic signature with their drawings as distinct as their paintings.

While the two are obviously related, they’re not identical.

“The mindset with drawing, for me, is different,” Jim Woodside told Sublette on the podcast. “Drawing is almost kind of exhale to the inhale painting. There's a kind of moment of just letting go, refreshing, that I find in drawing, in the way that I do it, that’s it's kind of heavy handed.”

Woodside’s explosive, colorful, geometric landscapes stand out in the “Masters of Drawing” show. As do Jill Carver’s sunflowers, and Jon Flaming’s cowboys and cowgirls on spiral bound paper. Nelson Tucker, too.

“Painting, I’m making more judgments per second with the color and the brush stroke and relating my reference, where drawing, one of them, I was talking to my grandmother on the phone while I was drawing, and I could engage with her while I was still working because there was less deciphering, less choices,” Gardner added. “When I'm painting, I need more of my brain; drawing was actually more meditative. All I'm doing is making lines.”

'Masters of Drawing' exhibition view from Maynard Dixon and Native American Art Museum.

Photo credit: Callum Geoffrion

The artworks in the show, however, by and large, are not sketches, they’re not practice. They were produced from the outset to be finished, collectable, stand-alone pieces.

Drawings offer an exceptional opportunity for collectors to acquire original artwork from major name artists for a fraction of the cost of paintings. Artworks in the “Masters of Drawing” show can be purchased for under $1,000 dollars in some cases, under $5,000 in most cases. These same artists sell oil paintings for 10-times that much.

Which explains why more galleries don’t sell drawings.

“Why aren't other (galleries) doing this,” Sublette asked himself rhetorically on his podcast. “A lot of other dealers think, ‘I can’t make enough money from this. Give me the big paintings.’ Yet (drawing is) the most intimate part of the entire process.”

Mark Sublette’s Medicine Man Gallery is open from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Saturday. The Maynard Dixon and Native American Art Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. Admission to the gallery and the Masters of Drawing Exhibition in the museum is free, admission to the rest of the museum is $12 for adults, $10 for seniors, $6 for students, and children and military with ID are free.