Ryan Scheer Creates Western Nostalgia

"Eve of the Wolf" by Ryan Scheer - 24 x 30"

Ryan Scheer left Steamboat Springs after high school and swore he would never come back. He was going to do big city things – and he did, in a handful of big cities: Los Angeles, Austin, San Francisco and Denver. He was working in documentary production, directing commercials for creative agencies and bouncing around a lot. When Covid hit, he realized he was burning out. “The whole process, to me, just killed creativity,” he says. “You come up with this badass idea but by the time it’s done and produced, there’s been so many voices in the room that it's watered down. I realized I needed to be more selfish and in control to do what I wanted to do.”

So, back to Steamboat he came, this time with a wife and children in tow. “The first thing that happened was that our family anxiety dropped by 50% after moving away from the city,” he says. The second thing that happened was that Ryan realized that a lot of his creativity started at his family’s ranch.

Ryan pivoted to a new career as a photographic artist using photography techniques from the late 1800s to produce Western-themed dioramas. “It was a happy accident for me,” he explains. He started learning about the tintype process – a tintype is a photograph produced on a thin sheet of metal – and began creating scenes (first up was a vintage Will Rogers toy: “I put it in front of my camera and then I thought, ‘holy shit! I can create a whole world.’”).

Now the worlds that Ryan creates are somewhat of an homage to the ranch life that he grew up immersed in. “I collect characters and look at them and imagine them in certain scenes,” he says. “Images pop into my head from growing up on ranches in my youth. All this stuff to me is nostalgic of my past; a lot of what shaped me are the ranch days when we were running free, doing our own thing and getting into trouble on the ranch.”

So beloved were his days on the ranch that Ryan coined a phrase for his work: Western nostalgia. It’s a theme that infiltrates his gallery, The Westerly, which he owns with his wife Jacque. Since they purchased it one year ago, the duo has been hard at work redoing the space, filtering through their artists and creating a vision for the future. “Our whole goal is to break down the idea that art is a pretentious thing,” Ryan says. “We like to say that we think of ourselves as the first gallery that allows you to draw on the walls.” Indeed, the gallery is equipped with toys for kids, plush sofas for lounging, a bar and of course, the modern contemporary western art that Ryan is inspired by.

“I get excited when people are doing something differently,” he says, pausing, “differently and well.” Just like ranch life, art was a prominent part of his upbringing. “I grew up around the classics and seeing them and I just kind of got bored of that,” he explains. “When I see something new and fresh that hasn’t been done before, like Miles Glynn putting neon on a canvas that’s got this pop art feel but it’s rooted in western culture – that kind of stuff gets me excited.”

Visit The Westerly at 907 Lincoln Avenue or online at the-westerly.com. Follow along with Ryan’s art on Instagram @local-legend-studio.