T. L. Solien: Toward the Setting Sun

When T. L. Solien embarks on a journey, he travels through epic topics of American literature, history, and culture. This nationally recognized artist, based in northern Minnesota and Madison, Wisconsin, has recently addressed Melville’s classic novel Moby-Dick and the Oregon Trail in his painting series and mixed media art. Whether imagining the nomadic life of Ahab’s widow or contemplating the restlessness that settled the American West, Solien employs inventive combinations of collage, paint, paper, and canvas to explore American myths.

Solien’s artistic sources range from Matisse’s cutouts to children’s coloring books to Winslow Homer and Picasso. His vivid imagery offers a surreal mix of characters, scale, and media and engages historic events and themes with an innovative aesthetic. The artist has exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, the Walker Art Center, and the American Center in Paris and has received awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bush Foundation, and the McKnight Foundation.

T. L. Solien: Toward the Setting Sun features sixty color images of Solien’s artworks, as well as essays by Elizabeth A. Schultz, Michael Duncan, and Colleen J. Sheehy and an interview by Erika Doss that place him in the context of American modernism, Melville studies, nineteenth-century landscape painting, and film. Moving from whaling adventures in New England to vast territories of land and opportunity in the West, Solien continues the eternal American search for self-fulfillment and rebirth in his art.

Colleen Sheehy is director of education at the Weisman Art Museum. Her books include Cabinet of Curiosities: Mark Dion and the University as Installation (Minnesota, 2006).