Archives for Oil

Pushing Boundaries

Pushing Boundaries

February 7, 2025 | by

For Nebraska native Todd A. Williams, capturing beauty and rendering it in ways that excite viewers on multiple levels is his greatest love. His distinctive way of texturing paint and his paint quality and manipulation allow viewers to take in the entire design and the overall harmony of the visual layout whether they’re up close, studying details, or standing at a distance. “I love it when I can reveal the entire process of creation from the drawing and abstract underpainting to the finished areas of refinement,” Williams says. “The belief in the process of creation is just as important as
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A Sense of Intimacy

A Sense of Intimacy

February 7, 2025 | by

Since she started exhibiting her work 15 years ago, Naomi Shachar’s emotive oil paintings of Western scenes and personalities have been celebrated and honored in competitions and exhibitions across the country. But, when she was just starting out as an artist, she aimed to please only one critic: her mother, Esther Katz. Seeking her mother’s input wasn’t solely about familiarity or honesty, but more about the respect she had for her mother’s appreciation of good art—her eye for it, her sensibilities. “She had a keen eye for art and could discern quality workmanship of form and color,” says Shachar, who
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‘I Believe in Callings’

‘I Believe in Callings’

February 7, 2025 | by

Lying on her back, flat on the ground, watching the clouds’ antics for hours. Running barefoot through the woods, dog beside her, throwing her head back and embracing the sun with arms and laughter. Moving from full throttle to dead stop in an instant, captured by the beauty of a tree. Creeping up on a view as if trying not to scare it away, hoping to snapshot the perfect ray of light in the camera of her mind’s eye. These are some of the earliest memories of landscape artist Romona Youngquist. They are also some of her most recent memories
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A Long and Winding Road

A Long and Winding Road

February 7, 2025 | by

“I’ve probably had a different journey to art than most artists,” says oil painter Lauri Ketchum, in what is actually a monumental understatement. “As a kid, I liked art and had an artistic brother, but I played basketball. I had nothing to do with art, didn’t pursue it whatsoever.” Ketchum’s decidedly uncreative path continued during her college years. “In college I thought, ‘I’ve got to do something that leads to a good job,’ so I went into accounting, which I always hated but which offered good career options,” she says. Three years after earning a degree in accounting from Oklahoma
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Spiritual Experiences

Spiritual Experiences

February 7, 2025 | by

When Randy Van Beek sees a landscape that he wants to paint, he grabs his camera and his outdoor painting kit. He then alternates between painting a small study that captures the light, colors, and emotions of the place and looking through the lens of his camera to compose the scene. “The adrenaline just starts rushing through me when I look through the camera lens,” he says. “With your eyes, you’re taking too much in, and there’s no way to communicate all of it. But with the camera, I find the little slices that are the most interesting. It’s all
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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Identifiable Art

Identifiable Art

October 9, 2024 | by

Kim Wiggins has spent the past 18 months preparing for an upcoming one-man show at Legacy Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, in November. He’s completed 25 new works, including an eightby-six-foot centerpiece that took him almost four months to finish. Preparing for this major solo show has given Wiggins reason to reflect back on the first show he ever participated in. It was 1983, and he had recently been invited to join the Society of American Impressionists. Twenty-five at the time, he was the youngest artist in the group. Wiggins was delighted to attend the society’s annual show in St. Louis,
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