Zachary Glenn Tutor, a second-generation artist born in 1986, has been drawn to the American West for as long as he can remember. At just two years old, he fell from a stool while reaching out for an incense burner shaped like a New Mexico adobe—the accident left a scar on his forehead and marked, physically, the beginning of a lifelong fascination. “I’ve been trying to reach out and capture the American West my entire life,” he reflects. That same incense burner, a gift to his parents from the family friends whose home the accident occurred in, still sits on his studio desk today.

Formative trips to California during his teenage years, a cross-country road trip through the Southwest after leaving art school, and countless sojourns westward since, continue to shape Tutor’s visual language. Throughout his 20s and 30s, he worked primarily in graphite, producing striking photorealistic landscapes while also curating Supersonic Art, a globally recognized art publication and annual exhibition.

In 2024, Tutor shifted his focus to painting—a transition inspired by the discovery of contemporary Western Artists as well as classical artists like Maynard Dixon whose writings on art had a revelatory impact on his pursuit of creating:

Am I a fool
in that I am deep-willed to seek
always a Vision
never to be reached?
Yet, so having striven,
having crushed my heart (and yours)
against the hard will of the world,
and though determination has grown gaunt
with an immortal hunger,
I am not yet resigned to wait.
I am deep-willed to strive
so that if old age, or even death,
only make answer
I still can say,
out of all the intense devotion of my days,
somehow here I have created beauty.

— Maynard Dixon, “VISIONARY.”

“As a curator, I started coming across works by artists like Glenn Dean or Logan Maxwell Hagege, and I just couldn’t get enough. These were the images I had been longing for all my life and they were singing to me! I was obsessed and completely immersed. I’m not sure there’s anything else I can think of. The passion I’ve had my entire life - the WEST - was finally completely clear to me.”

“It was time… It was just time to finally begin creating works — in color — of exactly what I’ve always wanted other people to see. It was like finding the fountain of youth after years and years of searching. Here it was all along. Just waiting. Right before me.”

Tutor currently lives and works in Oxford, Mississippi with his wife Katherine and their cat, Honey, and dog, Eudora.