Archives for Oelze, Don

The Studio of Don Oelze

The Studio of Don Oelze

April 7, 2025 | by

Some days, Don Oelze’s studio, tucked into a ponderosa forest under a mound of artistic boulders, resembles a movie studio as much as a painting studio. “I have a couple of really big photo shoots at my house every year,” Oelze says, adding that other artists join him for those shoots, which include models in authentic costumes and horses and a wagon outside on a hill. Oelze’s studio is divided into two halves in a 1,400-square-foot outbuilding that is just feet from his house. He currently paints in what he calls Studio B, while most of the props, costumes, and
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Western Inspiration

Western Inspiration

May 18, 2017 | by

The son of American missionary parents, Don Oelze was born in New Zealand in 1965 and lived there for the next nine years of his life. Despite those beginnings half a continent away, who now lives in Montana, has been blessed with the ability to portray the history of the American West with a remarkably vivid and captivating reality. The explanation of this gift is simple: From early childhood, his mother and father had piqued their son’s curiosity about Western and Native American cultures by sharing stories of their own upbringings in Arizona and Montana. His maternal grandmother reinforced the
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