About this website
Photo from 1970s CC Bulletin of Arnest working. Colorado College Special Collections.
Plans to create a repository of Arnest’s Scenes from Life have existed for over four decades. Correspondence between his friends, family, and colleagues around the time of his death outlines the arduous process of publishing Scenes (a process they refer to as “the project”). The project began in 1980 when Bruce Buck, a Colorado artist who studied with Arnest, expressed interest in publicizing the drawings. He donated funds toward this result in 1985 and promised to double his gift after the project progressed. Arnest, “whose influence is clear and apparent in our work,” according to Buck, retired in 1982 and hoped the project would focus on his 51-work series Scenes from Life.1 Yet health issues, competing projects, and missed deadlines delayed progress. In 1986, Arnest passed without seeing the project completed.
Interest persisted, nonetheless. President Gresham Riley wrote a concerned alumnus in 1987 that he shared the “belief that the publication of Bernard's drawings would be a very important undertaking.”2 Still, conversations on the matter became increasingly sporadic and the publication project slipped into hiatus; Buck’s original donation remained intact in a gift fund. Former student Victor Proulx, in one of many comparisons to Goya, noted: “Like Goya before him, Arnest conceived these works to be published in book form. Like Goya, he probably will have trouble realizing that intent.”3
This website seeks to rectify the decades-long absence of the complete series from public view. Scenes From Life has only been exhibited in its entirety three times: at the Denver Art Museum in 1977, in CC’s Packard Hall the same year, and at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center in 2019. As a digital exhibition, this site presents the whole series of 51 drawings, including interpretation and notes from the artist before his passing. Our hope is that Scenes from Life can now receive the attention deserving of Arnest’s career-defining body of work.
The Project Today
After the 2019 exhibition of Scenes from Life, interest in Arnest’s work and career at CC reignited. The CC Art Department, spearheaded by Professor Rebecca Tucker, returned to the publication project in 2020.
Four decades after Bruce Buck’s original proposal, this website now holds the research and writing of multiple generations of Colorado College students, faculty, and staff. We hope that the results reflect the years of inquiry, conversation, and continued engagement with Arnest’s work and the themes and ideas Scenes from Life raises.
This site exists thanks to the work of CC students Kate Planting ‘22 and Skye Eddy ‘25 between 2021 and 2023. Throughout 2025 and 2026, Jeremy Cashion ’24 wrote the content throughout the website (select commentary was written by Sofia Sigman, indicated with her initials). Cashion and Sofia Sigman ‘27 constructed the site in the same time frame. The project has proceeded under the continual guidance of Rebecca Tucker.
[1] Bruce Buck to Gresham Riley, December 5, 1984. Colorado College Special Collection.
[2] Gresham Riley to Bruce Colvin, March 9, 1987. Colorado College Special Collection.
[3] Victor Proulx to Barbara Arnest, February 9, 1986. Colorado College Special Collection.