San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts

Eugene Thurston



Eugene Thurston
Guadalupe Mountains
Oil on Canvas, 1981

The San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts presents Eugene Thurston: Portrait Painter of the Desert, an exhibition of the paintings of this well known El Paso artist who painted throughout the 20th Century. The work is on loan from Holly and Sanford Cox of El Paso. Holly Cox is one of Eugene Thurston's daughters and is an artist herself.

Eugene Thurston, a prominent Early Texas Artist, muralist, teacher and lecturer, was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on November 5, 1896 and moved with his family to El Paso in 1906, where he remained for the rest of his life. A landscape painter of the surrounding mountain and desert scenes, his representational style was born in the American regionalism of the 1920s and 30s.

Thurston loved painting his surroundings, always sensitive to the changing desert light and weather. "I enjoy painting the big skies, sun-up to sunset, the bright sunny days and the rainstorms, all expressing the changing moods of nature," wrote Thurston.

After graduating from El Paso High School he joined the Army and served until the end of World War I. He then studied commercial art for two years by correspondence from the Federal School of Art, Minneapolis. He also studied painting privately and learned from the work of other American artists of the Western landscape such as Charles Russell, Frederick Remington and Maynard Dixon among others. El Paso artist Dean Nichols was especially influential.

With his experience in commercial art and lithography he established a greeting card business, featuring scenes typical of southwestern regionalism. He marketed his cards over a territory that ranged from Santa Fe, NM to San Antonio, TX. He maintained the card business through the 1930s but discontinued it after the depression. In 1939 he obtained a teaching position in art at the vocational high school, El Paso Technical Institute, which he kept until he retired in 1966.

Eugene Thurston was one of the important founders of the El Paso art community in the 20th century and over the years participated in many local art organizations and El Paso art events. Thurston was represented by private galleries throughout his career. He exhibited widely including the Edgar B. Davis Competition, San Antonio, Annual Texas Artists Exhibition, Texas Fine Arts Association, Annual Exhibition of the Salons of America and the Society of independent Artists, International Fair and Exposition, El Paso in 1924. He had many one-man exhibitions including the El Paso Art Guild, 1928 and Dos Parajos Gallery, El Paso, 1977. His work is included in a large number of private and public collections, including the El Paso Museum of Art, The University of Texas at El Paso, The El Paso Independent School District, The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas and the Methodist Hospital in Henderson, Kentucky.

In later years he painted and sketched in Hawaii, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, various parts of Texas and on the West coasts. Even at age eighty, he produced "at least six paintings a month", in oils, watercolors, and pen and ink, portraying desert and mountain scenes as well as "golden aspens, rivers, lakes, cottonwood trees, and Mexican villages." He died at 96 years, on July 29, 1993.