Posts by Joe Tougas

‘A Renaissance Woman’

‘A Renaissance Woman’

March 3, 2023 | by

Laurie Lee’s art career took root while she and her husband Bryan lived for more than 45 years in Frannie, Wyoming, a small town—population 150—on the Montana border. They raised three children there, while also running the family’s natural gas business. Today, she and Bryan live in Powell, Montana, not far from Frannie. Lee has not moved far geographically but, artistically, she has come a long way as she creates paintings that tell stories, ask questions, and are beautifully crafted. A solid career in oil paintings that depict a range of visual moods—from pensive portraits to moody nightscapes to vivid
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New Man, New Artist

New Man, New Artist

January 5, 2023 | by

With colors that swerve up, literally, from the canvas in thick swooshes and splatches of oil paints, Mateo Romero knows full well his paintings aren’t everyone’s cup of gallery cappucino. “I had a dealer in Arizona, and the person who worked in the gallery told me, ‘I think you’re wasting a lot of paint,'” Romero recalls with a slight laugh. For the past six years, the Santa Fe, New Mexico, artist has been working in a unique method of portraying Southwestern landscapes and forms. His primary tools are oils, applied thickly on canvas with palette knives rather than brushes. The
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Capturing the Cowboy Culture

Capturing the Cowboy Culture

November 3, 2022 | by

It’s not often you find common qualities with oil painting and bull riding—but you do when you meet Western painter Brandon Bailey. “It’s a lot of self-doubt and fear,” he says of bull riding. “There’s no one there to make you get on that bull. With art, it’s the same type of thing, whether you’re sitting at the canvas or walking into a gallery; it’s the same type of feelings and the same type of emotions you come across.” In the decade-plus since he left rodeo riding, Bailey has made a full-time living working as an artist, with things progressing
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