Tracy Stuckey's West at Schmidt/Dean Gallery

The lady in the lingerie appears to be enjoying a post-coital smoke. The Stetson-hatted man is seated on the rumpled bed, head bowed and resting on his left arm— and, oh yes, a rooster is perched on the pillow looking at you.

Welcome to Tracy Stuckey's West. It's a peculiar place, to be sure— the women are always centerfold-beautiful and usually wear tiny bikinis; cowboy boots and six-shooters are optional. One might almost call these Girls of the Golden West country cousins to Richard Kern's New York Girls.

But while Kern's urban beauties tend to be sullen and inward looking, Stuckey's Wild West gals seem to be having a hell of a good time. Slue-Foot Sue, leaping for joy, is the iconic image of the Stuckey femme.

But what about those men of the West? We last saw Lefty, head bowed and lost in contemplation, but he's less the Stuckey guy than is the hero of Super-Western, mounted on his rearing stallion, twisted in his saddle to get off a last shot at his pursuers— except that he's toting a water pistol.

The Stuckey guy can be seen hanging out at poolside amid the bikinied sunbathers, wearing a feathered Indian war bonnet or standing upright on his horse, attempting to lasso a twister's tail in Tornado, but the blonde standing in the pool has her back turned to him and seems to be ignoring his heroics.

As you may have gathered, Stuckey's M.O. is to simultaneously celebrate the mythic notion of The West even as he gently sends it up. Although he now lives in West Virginia, Stuckey admits to having been raised on Western movies and TV shows— those great epics of American optimism— and he has lived in the West, so the real and the unreal blend rather naturally in his work.

It's a shame that Stuckey wasn't raised on crime movies. With his strongly illustrative bend, he would have been a natural to produce a series of elegantly illustrated Richard Stark "Parker" novels.