An American Remembrance: The Art of Bob Crofut, by Bob Crofut, P.O. Box 393, Ridgefield, CT 06877 [bobcrofut@gmail.com], 2019, $40
Bob Crofut is a man of few words (his book lacks even an introduction), but that’s OK, as his fine artwork, described as a “unique style of soft-focus realism,” more than fills every spread. The Connecticut resident, whose work has appeared in Wild West, described An American Remembrance thus to his hometown Ridgefield Press: “It’s a warm, sympathetic look at our American past and the emotional impact it has on me, which I express in paint and in words.”
Three of the paintings featured in the book—Wakunta, The Return of Yellowknife and Savage Autumn—depict lone American Indians in canoes. Other solitary Indians appear in Twilight of the Lakota, in which a Sioux warrior standing beside a bison skull holds aloft a peace pipe, and Savage Wind, an allegorical look at the Apache warrior Geronimo accompanied by his quote, “Once I moved around like the wind.”
Though his scenes often reflect nostalgia and peaceful simplicity, his oil Guns of Tombstone provides more intensity, depicting Wyatt Earp in the act of drawing his six-shooter. Other works with Western themes include Monty’s Drift (two cowboys and a packhorse), Up North (a boy and his wolf dog—think Jack London’s White Fang), Dust on the Tracks (a train robbery), Dusty’s Reel (a saddle bronc in action) and The Drifter. While information about the paintings is sketchy, the work itself is fabulous.
—Editor
