Archives for Oil

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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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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The Cowboy Connection Continues

The Cowboy Connection Continues

October 8, 2025 | by

  Bruce Greene has been fascinated with cowboys since he was a young boy growing up in Texas. That fascination continues today and is manifested in the paintings and sculptures he creates. It’s also apparent in how he spends some of his time when he’s not in his studio, which often involves helping out at area ranches, something he’s been doing for about three decades. “I started spending time on the JA Ranch and the 6666 Ranch,” Greene says. “I went and helped them work cattle, which I think is hugely important. A lot of Western art today lacks that,
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Chasing the Top Spot

Chasing the Top Spot

October 8, 2025 | by

  Every fall, Rebekah Knight’s mind is on the Federal Duck Stamp Contest. She’s entered the annual competition for the past 16 years—every year since she turned 18. She also participated in the Federal Junior Duck Stamp Contest for five years before that, winning the competition the third time she entered, when she was 15. That experience gave Knight the confidence to pursue art as something more than a hobby and helped to launch her career as an artist. “I had always known that I wanted to do art and that I had a talent for it, but I also
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Slow and Easy Does It

Slow and Easy Does It

October 8, 2025 | by

  Vicki Catapano’s paintings combine a mastery of brushstroke, color, exquisite realism, and authenticity. From the details of hand-braided hackamore of the Nevada buckaroo to the beadwork in Native American regalia, her work displays a passion and carefulness in preserving the ways of the Old West. “I’m such a slow painter,” Catapano says. “Getting the elements of the Native regalia and the hackamore or spade bit accurate are of utmost importance. Every detail in each painting is critical and has to be precise and correct.” Painting in the Old Masters style and technique of applying thin layers of paint, one layer
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The Studio of Josh Clare

The Studio of Josh Clare

October 8, 2025 | by

  Light plays a major role in the art and life of Josh Clare. The big-picture light is his strong Christian faith. Light is also the element he knew he wanted to harness and infuse throughout the 4,000-square foot studio he built near his Utah home in 2018.  The three-level structure has six 4-by-4-foot skylights above his painting area, and the way the lights works—illumination without direct sunlight—is the studio’s strongest asset. “It’s a beautiful, pleasing light to paint under,” Clare says. A Utah native who studied art, he met Cambree, a horticulture major, on the Brigham Young-Idaho campus. The
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