Archives for 2026 January-February Issue

Adventures in Wood

Adventures in Wood

December 8, 2025 | by

  Tucked inside a former bunk-house on a 5,600-acre farm 30 miles north of Great Falls, Montana, Richard Charlson is turning wood. The word “turning” can be defined two ways: using a lathe to shape wood and then taking several more steps to turn that wood into beautifully crafted works of art. Turning wood wasn’t in Charlson’s original life plan. He is a fourth-generation farmer, growing several types of grains as well as canola seeds on the land his great grandfather started farming in 1912. In 1985, Charlson began to make signs in his spare time, initially for a quarter
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The West Goes Pop

The West Goes Pop

December 8, 2025 | by

  Billy Schenck can’t draw, as he will tell you himself. “I was never a good draftsman,” he says. “I just can’t make stuff up and draw it from memory. I mean, I can draw cactus, I can draw trees, I can draw sagebrush—but hands, faces, horses? I have to use photographs.” Schenck isn’t being self-deprecating; that’s not his style, as he will also tell you. “I knew by the time I was 24 that I was going to alter the course of Western art, and that’s exactly what I did. So how about that for humility?” How does a
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Celebrating Imagination, Wit, and Joy

Celebrating Imagination, Wit, and Joy

December 8, 2025 | by

  Lisa Gordon has always been crazy about horses. That love took root when she was 12, growing up in Southern California. A shy child, her parents hoped that the responsibility of caring for a horse would bring her out of her shell. “As a teenager, I rode and trained horses almost every day,” Gordon says. “They were my whole world. I competed, cared for them, and built my life around that bond. That relationship has never left me; it’s central to who I am and what I create today.” It’s no surprise that Gordon sculpts horses, though her approach
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A New Life

A New Life

December 8, 2025 | by

  When Jerry Salinas turned 50, his wife gave him an unexpected gift. She knew that after more than 20 years as an illustrator for commercial clients, he was ready for a change. But she also knew that she needed to give him a gentle push in that direction. So, on his birthday, she told him to stop doing commercial work. That marked the official start of Salinas’ fine art career, a move he had been itching to make since he started illustrating back in the early 2000s. “I started my career in illustration, mainly to earn a living,” he
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Quiet Majesty

Quiet Majesty

December 8, 2025 | by

  Mark Boedges’ oil paintings are filled with a focused light, both subtle and brilliant, that captures the quiet majesty of the American West and the complexity of its varied landscape. His paintings weren’t always this way, however, and his path to clarity, both in his subject and in his life, was full of twists and turns. A St. Louis, Missouri, native, Boedges says that St. Louis wasn’t a hotbed of artistic activity, but its museums provided enough inspiration through works by Monet and other landscape painters to make an impression on him. “The Impressionists were the first big influence
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Unlocking Unorthodoxy

Unlocking Unorthodoxy

December 8, 2025 | by

  At age 79, Craig Tennant is conscientiously reinventing his career to shy away from tired formulas and to create art that makes him happy. The creative change hearkens back to his roots in advertising while it also gives him more permission to experiment and to paint what he wants. “I’m coming back to who I really am, and that’s a graphic artist,” he says. “I’m going to go into more design and a flatter look.” The directional change, Tennant says, is due in part to being burned out on creative ideas after feeling compelled to produce the same painting
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Basking in the Glow

Basking in the Glow

December 8, 2025 | by

  Jennifer Wendt’s first loves were farm in northeast Kansas, she was her father’s little helper. Together they’d ride tractors and combines as they tended to crops, and she’d follow him around as he checked and fed their cows. She spent her weekends with her siblings “baking” mud pies full of sticks, acorns, and fallen fruit, and riding around on her make-believe horse, also known as her bike. “I’d spend hours out in the woods tracking deer and bobcat and turkeys and anything that I could track or find, just exploring and spending time with my farm animals, our cattle,”
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The Studio of Karin Hollebeke

The Studio of Karin Hollebeke

December 8, 2025 | by

  Inside a charming log cabin set on a 40-acre plot of land in the northeast corner of Utah, Karin Hollebeke is hard at work, creating scenes of the Old West that have found their way into the hearts—and homes—of collectors throughout the country. The former cattle ranch, located 40 miles from Vernal, and situated at an altitude of 7,000 feet, attracts an impressive variety of wildlife. It’s the perfect setting for Hollebeke, who has spent most of her career capturing scenes of the historic American West. She and her husband Wayne, who passed away last year, moved from El
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