Archives for Oil

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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A Walk on the Wild Side

A Walk on the Wild Side

October 9, 2024 | by

The influence of one artist on another can be gradual, something that develops and reveals itself over years. In the case of Kathryn Ashcroft, it happened much more abruptly. That came about in 2015, when David Koch, a painter living in Utah, asked her to help him with a mural project that was going to be displayed at a church building in Montreal, Canada. During the 10 years before she got that request, Ashcroft was creating realistic oil paintings of wildlife that were exercises in precision, with every hair and feather in place. Koch wanted her to paint some animals
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A New Focus

A New Focus

October 9, 2024 | by

Many artists, when asked how they got started, will cite a parent or teacher who encouraged them, an artist they admired—someone who guided them to their vocation. For Western oil painter Jason Lee Tako, all of these influences played a role, and he is generous in giving credit to everyone who supported him on his journey. But, when he recounts his foundations, it’s clear that his first and best inspiration was nature itself and the simple act of sketching what he saw in the woods. “Growing up in rural Minnesota, I would get up at five in the morning and
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The Romance of the West

The Romance of the West

October 9, 2024 | by

Dakota Pitts is on a self-guided journey that began 11 years ago, when he was 23 and took a life drawing class at City College in Long Beach, California. That journey has taken him around the world and has landed his paintings in some impressive art shows and galleries. Pitts’ love of the outdoors traces back to his childhood. Growing up in Long Beach, he spent most of his time drawing, surfing, and skateboarding. “I just wanted to be outside,” he says, adding that he still does. Following his high school graduation, Pitts moved up the coast to Santa Barbara,
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The Studio of Lori Putnam

The Studio of Lori Putnam

October 9, 2024 | by

Nestled on a five-acre plot of land in rural Charlotte, Tennessee, Lori Putnam is living the dream in her 1,800-square foot studio. The open design of the studio’s structure also boasts a 700-square-foot loft that serves as living space for Putnam and her husband Mark. Looking at the building from the outside, you would assume it’s just another house but, once you walk through its doors, you realize how wrong that assumption is. The openness of the home and studio gains perspective when Putnam says there is only one door inside: the one that leads to the bathroom. Putnam and
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Living History

Living History

August 8, 2024 | by

“To be a frontiersman, I thought I needed a horse and a rifle,” artist Doug Hall says of his childhood in southwest Missouri, where he did his best to imitate his heroes, Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton. That meant spending his days in a tipi in his parents’ backyard and, at age 15, skipping school to buy a flintlock rifle. “I’ve been shooting one ever since,” he says. That story is a fitting example of how Hall has lived his life, bucking convention in favor of the way things used to be. He has won black powder rifle matches, roamed
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