THOM ROSS | Buffalo Bill's Wild West | July 2026

Buffalo Bill & the Mythic West A Thom Ross Exhibition There is an unmistakable gravity to the work of Thom Ross. His paintings do not merely depict the American West — they resurrect it. Dust, gunfire, showmen, horses, flags, legends, outlaws, performers — Ross pulls these figures from the mythology of America and gives them new life with vivid color, theatrical energy, and deep humanity. His work exists somewhere between history and dream, between fact and folklore, where memory becomes larger than life. For decades, Ross has explored the stories Americans tell about themselves, especially the stories born in the West. Few artists have spent more time wrestling with that mythology — or rendered it with such conviction. In this newest body of work, Ross turns his attention to one of the greatest myth-making machines America ever created: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. What began as a stage production called The Scouts of the West evolved into Buffalo Bill Cody’s sprawling Wild West spectacle — a traveling performance that transformed the lived experience of the frontier into entertainment for mass audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. As Ross explains, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West became the place where “the historical reality of the western experience was transformed into rousing entertainment.” By the turn of the century, Cody had become “the most recognizable celebrity on Earth.” That transformation — history becoming performance, reality becoming spectacle — lies at the heart of this exhibition. Buffalo Bill did not simply preserve the story of the American West. He staged it. He dramatized it. He exported it to the world beneath waving flags, thunderous applause, and clouds of dust. The West became theater. America became myth. Timed with the 250th anniversary of the United States, Hemmings Gallery will fully embrace the spirit of the exhibition, transforming the space with patriotic bunting, flags, and echoes of the grand pageantry that once traveled across America and Europe under Buffalo Bill’s banner. Ross’s paintings are not nostalgic decorations. They are alive with tension and emotion. They ask us to consider not only the stories America created, but why those stories still resonate so deeply today. His figures feel iconic and vulnerable at the same time — heroic, tragic, absurd, beautiful, and unmistakably human. This exhibition is not simply about the Old West. It is about America imagining itself. ⸻ Artist Talk & Special Performance Wednesday, July 2nd Hemmings Gallery, Ketchum Join us on the evening before the opening for a special event with Thom Ross — part artist talk, part living history, part theater. The evening will feature Ralph as Buffalo Bill, Barb as Annie Oakley, and Thom Ross himself in the role he was perhaps born to play: the town drunk. Additional details to follow. It promises to be unlike anything else happening in the Valley this summer. ⸻ Opening Reception Friday, July 3rd Hemmings Gallery, Ketchum Join us for an evening celebrating Thom Ross and this extraordinary new body of work — a vivid exploration of spectacle, mythology, celebrity, and the enduring dream of the American West.