Archives for 2024 March-April Issue

The Studio of Michael Ome Untiedt

The Studio of Michael Ome Untiedt

February 8, 2024 | by

When he was a college student in the 1970s, Colorado artist Michael Ome Untiedt attended a lecture by Jacob Bronowski and remembers to this day most of what the Polish-British mathematician and philosopher said. “I heard Dr. Bronowski say that it is not tools nor intellect nor language that separate us from all other species on the planet. The thing that separates us from all other species is the ability to pass on aspects of our culture through acts of beauty, which he defined as art,” Untiedt recalls. “That has led me my entire life. That’s why I’m committed to
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Letting His Voice Find Him

Letting His Voice Find Him

February 8, 2024 | by

When we caught up with Andrew Higdon, the 27-year-old artist had just returned from his honeymoon with his wife Savannah. “When we first got engaged, I laid out my plan for the next 10 years [as an artist] in front of her, and said, ‘This is what this life looks like to me; are you down for this?’” he says. “She said, ‘Absolutely.’ I couldn’t ask for anyone better to walk this journey with.” Higdon credits many kind advisors for helping him put together a roadmap for his life at such a young age but he admits that his future
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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.”
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A Celebration of Color

A Celebration of Color

February 8, 2024 | by

Erin Hanson has an energy that mirrors the paintings she creates. She shares the story of her life—and her work—and injects both with vibrant colors and textures that have captured the attention of collectors throughout the world. That’s no exaggeration; during the past 15 years she has sold 3,000 original paintings and countless prints. Collectors purchase her paintings as quickly as she completes them. One collector says that, every time he looks at the painting he purchased from Hanson, “it gets more and more beautiful” and that it will be his “get-out-of-husband-jail-for-free-card” for years to come because his wife loves
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Talent and Tradition

Talent and Tradition

February 8, 2024 | by

Ed Natiya’s Indigenous and Native American sculptures and monuments have earned him a reputation as one of the best sculptors of his kind. In 2016, for instance, he won the top prize in sculpture at the Southwestern Association for Indian Art (SWAIA) Indian Market—the largest Native American art show in the world, attended by 100,000 at its annual gathering in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In March, he’ll have one of his larger-than-life monuments on display at the Briscoe Western Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas. The Briscoe doesn’t ordinarily take large pieces but, in Natiya’s case, it made an exception.
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Endless Inspiration

Endless Inspiration

February 8, 2024 | by

Jessica L. Bryant is a multi-dimensional woman. She’s an artist, a conservationist, a wife, a mother—and a bagpiper. Yes, you read that correctly. Bryant has been playing bagpipes since she was a teenager growing up in Minnesota and today is the pipe major of a pipe band in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. By the way, she also plays the piano, French horn, and several other instruments. What Bryant is best known for, however, are her watercolor paintings that capture the beauty of landscapes throughout the United States. Her love of the land is deep and goes beyond her art. “Being outside,
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It’s Never Too Late

It’s Never Too Late

February 8, 2024 | by

Arkansas oil painter Brenda Morgan’s artistic life currently is a tale of two buffalo—or maybe three. “It’s a long, sad story,” she says with a sigh. “The painting I’m working on is actually a replacement for the Woolaroc/Women Artists of the West Invitational Exhibition in May. I had two buffalo that were going to be in it but now I’m basically repainting one of them, painting the same painting. I varnished it, the same way I varnish all my paintings; I’ve used the same varnish for years. I don’t know what happened.” The varnish, Morgan says, got “a little weird.”
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