The Amon Carter Museum of American Art is keeping it local with its latest show, Invented Worlds of Valton Tyler. The artist in question is from Texas City and freely admits to being influenced by a terrible industrial accident that he witnessed at age 3 when a boat carrying thousands of tons of fertilizer exploded in the harbor of his hometown. Still, Tyler (who turns 73 this year) isn’t typical of other self-taught Southern artists. He doesn’t take on folk subjects like local landscapes and people, nor does he use cheap materials or make mixed-media assemblages. Instead, the resident of Garland executes oil paintings and graphite drawings of alien-looking landscapes influenced by Hieronymous Bosch and Salvador Dalí, with strange outcroppings emerging from the ground that are neither animal nor machine nor architectural structure but share characteristics with all of them.
The Carter is bringing together a large show of Tyler’s works, which include his etchings and aquatint prints done at SMU in the 1970s. If you’re an art lover with a taste for the unusual, you won’t want to miss the museum’s retrospective of this unique creator.
Invented Worlds of Valton Tyler runs Feb 11-Apr 30 at Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd, FW. Admission is free. Call 817-738-1933.
