Posts by Sara Gilbert Frederick

Beyond the Paint

Beyond the Paint

December 13, 2024 | by

During the past 25 years, Judith Dickinson has painted portraits of hundreds of people—including some for celebrities. She’s painted Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of Colorado, and federal judges. She’s also done three commissions for TV’s Judge Judy who once sent her private plane from Florida to Colorado to pick up a finished work for her son’s birthday party. Dickinson has also painted the African people she and her husband Gary have met on their trips to Uganda and Rwanda and the cowboys and Native Americans they got to know at the South Dakota ranch they visit almost every year. But,
Read More

Identifiable Art

Identifiable Art

October 9, 2024 | by

Kim Wiggins has spent the past 18 months preparing for an upcoming one-man show at Legacy Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, in November. He’s completed 25 new works, including an eightby-six-foot centerpiece that took him almost four months to finish. Preparing for this major solo show has given Wiggins reason to reflect back on the first show he ever participated in. It was 1983, and he had recently been invited to join the Society of American Impressionists. Twenty-five at the time, he was the youngest artist in the group. Wiggins was delighted to attend the society’s annual show in St. Louis,
Read More

‘It’s Been a Wondrous Career’

‘It’s Been a Wondrous Career’

August 8, 2024 | by

Jack Sorenson remembers the day his cowboy lifestyle collided with his dreams of being an artist. He was 9 years old and helping to break a horse on the family’s dude ranch and frontier town located on the rim of the Palo Duro Canyon—not far from Amarillo, Texas. He remembers being bucked off that horse—and he remembers what he was thinking as it happened. “Between the time I left the saddle and the time I hit the ground, I had the thought to protect my right arm,” Sorenson says. Now, as he turns 70, the toll of all the tumbles
Read More

A Noble Pursuit

A Noble Pursuit

June 6, 2024 | by

Amy Lay admits that it took her a few years to recognize the value of the art degree she earned from Eastern Oregon University in 1994. At the time, most of the faculty members were interested only in abstract art and didn’t appreciate her passion for wildlife and nature. Since those were the only subjects that interested her, Lay often felt that her instructors snubbed her. But there was one professor who encouraged her to take the time to explore and to develop her own style. Thirty years later, the style that emerged from that exploration has become the hallmark
Read More

A Dream Realized

A Dream Realized

April 10, 2024 | by

Dale Terbush hasn’t kept count of the number of paintings he’s created during the course of his career—but, if he had to guess, he thinks the tally would be close to 10,000. Terbush, who has been painting vibrant, light-infused landscapes for almost 55 years, works fast. When people often ask him how he is able to paint so quickly, he has a ready answer: “How many times do you have to paint a tree before you understand what a tree looks like? The same goes for clouds, mountains, anything,” he says. “How many times do you paint them before you
Read More

Full Steam Ahead

Full Steam Ahead

February 8, 2024 | by

During the past six months, J.R. Hess has been living his dream life. He moved to Colorado with his wife Molly and their two teenage sons, Cass and River, he’s got studio space in his new home in Loveland, and his photorealistic wildlife drawings hang in galleries in Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to get to this point,” Hess says. “I am so thankful, so happy to be doing what I’m doing. I’m still new at this but I know that I’m so fortunate to be able to do what I love to do.”
Read More

On the Road

On the Road

December 11, 2023 | by

On some level, Linda Lillegraven has been drawn to the wide-open spaces of the Western landscape for most of her life. She remembers visiting national parks with her family when she was a child. When they’d stop at an overlook and get out of the car to take in the view, she’d see her dad’s face light up. “He’d say, ‘This is God’s country,’” Lillegraven says. “The enthusiasm he had, the love and reverence—he really loved the big open spaces, and I think I caught that from him.” The idea of painting those spaces didn’t occur to her, however, until
Read More

Peaceful, Spiritual Paintings

Peaceful, Spiritual Paintings

October 12, 2023 | by

In November, Jane Hunt expects to move into her “dream studio” in her family’s home outside of Boulder, Colorado. Building it has been a three-year process, and she’s more than excited to leave behind the small, temporary space she’s been using. It isn’t just the open floor plan and the additional space for new, larger easels that Hunt is anticipating. “The thing I’m most excited about is the view,” she says. “The studio is on the very top of my house, which is on the very top of a mountain so the view is just amazing. It’s a vista as
Read More

The Studio of Mary Ross Buchholz

The Studio of Mary Ross Buchholz

August 10, 2023 | by

From the windows of her studio, Mary Ross Buchholz can see a row of apricot trees and a stand of towering oaks. She can see the set of beehives that she tends and the barbecue pits where family meals are often prepared. And just past a slight hill, she can see the fence that separates her house from the pasture where the family’s livestock grazes. That’s been her view since 2002, when she and her husband Bob added the 13-foot-by-20-foot studio onto their home near Eldorado, Texas. Before then, they had three young boys running around the house and little
Read More

The Adventure Continues

The Adventure Continues

June 15, 2023 | by

Last fall, Lee Alban took a trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Although he and his family had traveled through the Tetons back in the 1970s and had explored some of the National Parks out West in the early 1990s, he hadn’t yet been to Jackson Hole. The purpose of the trip was to participate in the National Oil and Acrylics Painters Society’s Best of America exhibition. It was Alban’s first trip to Jackson Hole, and he was eager to see the city and gather photographic reference materials he could use in future works. But it wasn’t just the quintessential beauty
Read More