Archives for 2022 November-December Issue

Poignant Moments

Poignant Moments

November 3, 2022 | by

Colorado-based low relief sculptor J.D. (Jeremiah) Welsh spent much of the past year working in secret. The award-winning member of the National Sculpture Society (NSS) is no stranger to producing complex works on tight deadlines, but he poured many months and 23 years’ worth of skill into one special, small object: the Brookgreen Medal. “I honestly never thought I’d have the chance to do it,” Welsh says of the medal, which honors the prestigious Brookgreen Gardens sculpture garden in South Carolina and is presented to artists who ear the Anna Huntington Hyatt Award at the NSS’ annual awards exhibition. It
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Pushing the Color

Pushing the Color

November 3, 2022 | by

“I do a couple of shows a year,” says New Mexico-based oil painter Mejo Okon. “The rest of the time, I’m just trying to do cool stuff.” That statement is not a hollow boast. Okon has just wrapped up a courtroom sketching gig for a high-profile trial in Colorado and is now back home in Albuquerque painting. She recently dabbled in acting as well, playing a courtroom sketch artist in the upcoming “Coyote vs. Acme,” an animated/live action movie. “Today I’m working on colorizing some of my seventy-plus drawings from the trial,” Okon says, going on to offer some background
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Flying Free

Flying Free

November 3, 2022 | by

I was given a guitar when I was 5; it was my first creative outlet. As I got older, I would take my guitar into the acres of woods and creeks in my backyard, where I was transported to a place free of the cares I thought I had as a 13-year-old. When I vanished into the woods, emerging hours later, I felt like I had gotten to fly free for a while. Today, a couple of hours are hard to come by, and when I have it, there is not enough time to reset…to fly free. Quiet places—I’m seduced
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‘I Paint What Excites Me’

‘I Paint What Excites Me’

November 3, 2022 | by

Getting to the Prix de West International Art Exhibition last June wasn’t easy for Ron Kingswood. His home near Sparta, Ontario, is almost 1,150 miles from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma—and travel between Canada and the United States had become more challenging since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. But it was worth the trip for Kingswood and his wife Linda. His painting, A Morning Walk, earned the Major General and Mrs. Don D. Pittman Wildlife Award for exceptional artistic merit for a wildlife painting or sculpture at the show. “I was
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Patterns of Light

Patterns of Light

November 3, 2022 | by

On a hot July day in Livingston, Montana, landscape artist Aaron Schuerr took a much needed break. Work during the past month and a half—well, really the past year—had found him scrambling to keep up with his projects. A major one was a painting for the grand opening of the Illume Gallery West in Phillipsburg, Montana. Schuerr did, however, make time to join other grand opening artists in painting at the ranch that gallery owners, Jane Lundgren and her husband Mark, own. Schuerr does what he loves and loves what he does. But there’s more to the man than creating
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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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‘Light is Everything’

‘Light is Everything’

November 3, 2022 | by

When Sue Krzyston and her husband Mike moved into their new house in Phoenix, Arizona, the bare walls were begging to be filled. Having taken a six-month painting class, and at Mike’s suggestion that she replace the starkness of those walls with her own paintings, Krzyston got to work. Soon their new home was filled with colorful creations. And so it began. Those paintings led to a passionate pursuit of painting, of creating vibrant still lifes that, combined with her love of Native American artifacts, have become a driving force in Krzyston’s life. Her paintings quickly attracted the attention and
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The Studio of Joe Bohler

The Studio of Joe Bohler

November 3, 2022 | by

Having been raised on a 1,200-acre working ranch in northwestern Montana, it was not surprising that, as an adult, watercolorist Joseph Bohler would eventually make his home in a place with similar beauty and open spaces. Now living in Monument, Colorado, he and his wife Alaina try to visit his home state every year. “Every other year, I also head to South Dakota to do a little research,” he says. “There is a working ranch there that has a yearly event known as Artists’ Ride. They bring in all kinds of models–mountain men and Indians from various tribes. They can
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