Archives for 2016 May-June Issue

Striking a Balance

When Jeremy Lipking was 19 years old, he moved from his family’s home in Southern California to the Sierra Nevada mountain range. He had spent a year taking art classes at a community college but wasn’t fully committed to it. What he really wanted was to be outside—hiking in the mountains, rock climbing, and snowboarding on the California slopes. At some point during all of that outdoor activity, an idea occurred to Lipking: If he were to become a landscape artist, he could make a career out of being outside. Jeremy Lipking Ghost Herd Oil 24″x30″ This piece was inspired
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‘It’s All a Challenge’

If the Muse were to visit Len Chmiel, one imagines that he might politely, but firmly, usher her to a chair in the corner of his studio and tell her, “You can watch quietly, but please don’t disturb me while I’m painting.” Chmiel is his own muse. He takes pleasure and pride in owning every phase of the artistic process, from ideation to composition, from blank canvas to finished product, from framing and naming to digitization. Len Chmiel Early to Rise Oil 28″x30″ “The scent of morning coffee, mingling with bougainvillea blazing out loud, rewards a sunrise stroll.” Len Chmiel
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‘Liberating the Spirit’

In the world of art and literature, Tony Angell is best known as an award-winning wildlife sculptor, painter, and author. However, to the corvids, owls, and sea mammals that have long inspired his creative spark, he has become an “angel” in the truest sense of the word. Infusing his stunning stone and bronze sculptures with a spirituality gained through a lifetime of firsthand observation, Angell has created an oeuvre of images whose value lies both in their aesthetic beauty and their ability to fuel the viewer’s desire to fully understand and protect these magnificent creatures of the wild. Tony Angell
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Magnificently Mesmerizing

Romel de la Torre won his first art award at the tender age of 10. Although his parents had supported his interest in art—encouraging him to draw and sketch the world around him—it wasn’t until he appeared on a local TV program to receive his award that they began to think, “Maybe he’s got a talent here.” He did indeed. Since then, de la Torre has earned many awards for his paintings, including the grand prize and artist of the year awards from the Oil Painters of America and, in 2008, a gold medal and the People’s Choice Award from
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Landscape Love Affair

Oh, to live the life of a landscape painter, to be blessed with the ability to see—and put down with paint—the beauty that surrounds us, beauty that too many of us take for granted. Each outing is an adventure, a sensory immersion into the sights, sounds, smells, and feel the great outdoors. Grace Schlesier Show Off (Yosemite in Fall) Oil 16″x20″ “Painting the landscape is where I feel most at home. It makes me happy. My studio work springs from the sketches and studies done on location, since I find nature the best teacher. Larger studio works often take months
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The Studio of Tom Browning

The view from Tom Browning’s new studio is worth the price of admission. OK, he doesn’t really charge admission, but if he did, it’d be worth it. Browning’s studio sits atop the home he and his wife Joyce recently built near Bend, Oregon. The couple returned to Oregon in 2014, after a sojourn in Arizona, and lived in a rental home while searching for a spot to build a home of their own. They obviously hit pay dirt on some prime real estate. Tom Browning (Oregon) Barry Oil 18″x15″
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