Posts by Joe Tougas

The Studio of Heather Burton & Dave Santillanes

The Studio of Heather Burton & Dave Santillanes

April 8, 2026 | by

  Since meeting in Maui in 2014, artists Dave Santillanes and Heather Burton have been side by side in many ways: dating, marriage, parenting, and living as full-time artists in Colorado. Since September 2025, when they moved from Wellington, Colorado, to Colorado Springs, they have also been side by side when painting in their spacious studio on the main level of their home on the northern part of town near Black Forest. The main-level studio is the first room a visitor sees, and once in the studio, the view is as inspirational as their art. “We look right out at
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He’s Still On the Bus

He’s Still On the Bus

February 4, 2026 | by

  For almost 40 years, Jason Scull has been creating sculptures that are alive with action and emotion. In the spirit of the cowboy ethos he emulates in his art, he takes an organic approach to his realistic award-winning work, eschewing, for instance, working from photographs. “If you’re sculpting a running horse, you aren’t going to find a photograph that’s going to give you a 360-degree view of the animal in one position,” he says. “You have to be able to know how to construct these things and do it in a realistic, natural way. That goes back to what
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Quiet Majesty

Quiet Majesty

December 8, 2025 | by

  Mark Boedges’ oil paintings are filled with a focused light, both subtle and brilliant, that captures the quiet majesty of the American West and the complexity of its varied landscape. His paintings weren’t always this way, however, and his path to clarity, both in his subject and in his life, was full of twists and turns. A St. Louis, Missouri, native, Boedges says that St. Louis wasn’t a hotbed of artistic activity, but its museums provided enough inspiration through works by Monet and other landscape painters to make an impression on him. “The Impressionists were the first big influence
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The Studio of Josh Clare

The Studio of Josh Clare

October 8, 2025 | by

  Light plays a major role in the art and life of Josh Clare. The big-picture light is his strong Christian faith. Light is also the element he knew he wanted to harness and infuse throughout the 4,000-square foot studio he built near his Utah home in 2018.  The three-level structure has six 4-by-4-foot skylights above his painting area, and the way the lights works—illumination without direct sunlight—is the studio’s strongest asset. “It’s a beautiful, pleasing light to paint under,” Clare says. A Utah native who studied art, he met Cambree, a horticulture major, on the Brigham Young-Idaho campus. The
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The Beauty of Birds

The Beauty of Birds

August 7, 2025 | by

  As long as there are birds in the skies, Bill Rice will sculpt them. That’s essentially the work ethic, the focus, and the passion with which he has been operating for more than 40 years as an artist who specializes in avian wood carvings. The winner of several awards, including the 2024 People’s Choice Award at the Adirondack Experience Museum in Blue Mountain, New York, Rice’s home is in an area of Connecticut where he can walk outside and see different types of birds every day. Summer walks with his wife, photographer Brooke Rice, present endless subject matter. “This
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Art and Conservation

Art and Conservation

June 5, 2025 | by

For 20 years, Anne Peyton was immersed in professional car racing. She had a fast and furious career shooting photos and painting race cars for several automotive magazines, ultimately working for several hot rod publications as photographer, painter, and art director while living in California. Working for publications that included Motor Trend and Road & Track, Peyton’s artwork was considered top-tier in the racing industry, praised by the likes of Automobile magazine as one of the best racing painters in the nation. That was all before the year 2000, which is when her art changed—drastically. Read the full article in
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A Moment of Movement

A Moment of Movement

April 7, 2025 | by

For three summers in the 1980s, Ott Jones worked as a fishing guide at the Rainbow King Lodge in Lake Iliamna on the Alaskan Peninsula. He led fishing excursions during the days and worked on his art at night. “If I was stationed at the lodge I’d sculpt at the lodge; if I was living in the bush I’d sculpt at camp by candlelight,” he says. It was one of the last jobs he had before becoming a full-time artist. During those three years, Jones lived in Castle Rock, Colorado, where he was under the artistic mentorship of accomplished Colorado
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A Sense of Intimacy

A Sense of Intimacy

February 7, 2025 | by

Since she started exhibiting her work 15 years ago, Naomi Shachar’s emotive oil paintings of Western scenes and personalities have been celebrated and honored in competitions and exhibitions across the country. But, when she was just starting out as an artist, she aimed to please only one critic: her mother, Esther Katz. Seeking her mother’s input wasn’t solely about familiarity or honesty, but more about the respect she had for her mother’s appreciation of good art—her eye for it, her sensibilities. “She had a keen eye for art and could discern quality workmanship of form and color,” says Shachar, who
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Putting Scratchboard on the Map

Putting Scratchboard on the Map

December 13, 2024 | by

Like most people in their 20s, Colorado wildlife artist Nelson Tucker spent many of those years carving out his own identity. Today, carving is vital to his art. “I’m going to stick with scratchboard for a while,” he says. “I’ve always had a love for black and white and love the different values and shapes that you can get out of it.” Though he also does pen-and-ink drawings, as well as pencil-on-paper, Tucker’s passion is for scratchboard. Tucker discovered scratchboard art when he was 10 and fell in love with the process of carving into an inked, black surface to
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A Walk on the Wild Side

A Walk on the Wild Side

October 9, 2024 | by

The influence of one artist on another can be gradual, something that develops and reveals itself over years. In the case of Kathryn Ashcroft, it happened much more abruptly. That came about in 2015, when David Koch, a painter living in Utah, asked her to help him with a mural project that was going to be displayed at a church building in Montreal, Canada. During the 10 years before she got that request, Ashcroft was creating realistic oil paintings of wildlife that were exercises in precision, with every hair and feather in place. Koch wanted her to paint some animals
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