“I spent my childhood on the East Coast, but I think I grew up here,” says Western oil painter Scott Yeager.

Here refers to Woodland Park, Colorado, where Yeager and his wife Marie have made their home in the shadow of Pikes Peak for the past 15 years, but he could easily be referring to the West as both specific geography and more abstract concept. He’s come of age as an artist in the sagebrush, beside the rivers, on the flanks of the mountains. He’s camped and hiked, he’s hunted and fished, and all of his experiences in nature have informed his intricate, layered landscape and wildlife paintings.

A self-taught artist for the most part, Yeager enjoyed drawing as a child and displayed an early knack for it. He’s not sure where that ability comes from; it’s something neither nature nor nurture can explain. “It’s sort of amazing,” he acknowledges with a self-deprecating laugh. “No one in my family was an artist or musician or creative type, or even went to college. I’m an anomaly, I guess.”

Read the full article in the September/October 2023 issue.

Camp on the Little Horn

Oil
14″ by 18″

Autumn Reflections

Oil
17″ by 32″