Archives for 2025 January-February Issue

A Riding Tradition

A Riding Tradition

December 13, 2024 | by

I’ve been riding with friends near Moab, Utah, for 30 years, mostly in Professor Valley, 15 miles east of town on the Colorado River. Last year’s riders included artists June Dudley, Cindy Long, Marlin Rotach, a few family members, and me. The artists represent a solid core and have come for the ride for many years. Our purpose is to get out of the studio and into the pictures we paint—to feel the reins with our fingers, smell the horse’s sweat, and hear the squeak of saddle leather. The attractions are the friendships that have developed, and the unique scenery,
Read More

His Art Speaks for Itself

His Art Speaks for Itself

December 13, 2024 | by

Duke Beardsley doesn’t really have a name for what he creates. “People say things like the new West, contemporary West, all these things,” he says, while declining to offer his own alternative labels. “I never really think about what to call it.” Instead, Beardsley lets his art speak for itself—and it does, in repeating motifs, pop-art-reminiscent stylings and palettes, and other attributes that defy the conventions and expectations that surround Western art. As his eye-catching pieces find homes in ever-increasing shows and collections, he continues to push the boundaries. A few months ago, Beardsley was in his studio in Denver,
Read More

A Grand Affair

A Grand Affair

December 13, 2024 | by

Twenty-two years ago, while driving from a workshop in Wyoming to her home in California, Amery Bohling took a detour and stopped at the Grand Canyon. She had visited the natural wonder when she was 12, and wanted to revisit it as an adult. That spur-of-the-moment decision was to have a major impact on Bohling and her art. It was October, a busy time at the canyon, but she was able to get a room at the lodge on the North Rim for one night—the last night of the season. She spent the day, taking photos and sitting on the
Read More

Putting Scratchboard on the Map

Putting Scratchboard on the Map

December 13, 2024 | by

Like most people in their 20s, Colorado wildlife artist Nelson Tucker spent many of those years carving out his own identity. Today, carving is vital to his art. “I’m going to stick with scratchboard for a while,” he says. “I’ve always had a love for black and white and love the different values and shapes that you can get out of it.” Though he also does pen-and-ink drawings, as well as pencil-on-paper, Tucker’s passion is for scratchboard. Tucker discovered scratchboard art when he was 10 and fell in love with the process of carving into an inked, black surface to
Read More

A Love Story

A Love Story

December 13, 2024 | by

Texas artist Tony Pro is currently preparing paintings he will exhibit at Night of Artists at the Briscoe Western Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas, in March. It’s his third year in the show, and he’s excited about it, calling his works for that event a love story to the American West and to his own artistic trajectory. “The unique component of my art is the narrative depth,” he says. “Each piece tells a profound story, reflecting personal and historical themes. This storytelling, combined with my technical expertise and attention to cultural and historical details, sets my work apart.” Pro
Read More

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

All is Well in Paradise

All is Well in Paradise

December 13, 2024 | by

Scott Rogers has heard “the voice” speak to him twice. Both times it changed his life. The first time came about after he had purchased a sculpture created by his uncle, Grant Speed. He had seen the sculpture, entitled Rough String, in 1982 and knew he had to have it but, being a college student, he couldn’t afford it. “In 1990, when I had a little money, I called uncle Grant and said I wanted to buy it,” Rogers says. It had sold out, but Speed, through an art gallery, was able to locate one that would soon become available
Read More

The Studio of Teresa Elliott

The Studio of Teresa Elliott

December 13, 2024 | by

A perky, curious French Charolais, swirling the reflective water it’s churning through, gazes over Teresa Elliott’s shoulder. She’s not outside, but the half-finished, 23” by 30” painting of the cow that sits on her easel feels at home in the dry, open landscape outside her studio window. Elliott’s studio overlooks the Que Dice Ranch with 10,000 open acres of hills, buttes, and desert plants. Cattle often wander through the vista, so it’s not surprising that Elliott has made them her subject matter ever since she pivoted away from graphic design, copywriting, and illustration and into a full-time career as a
Read More