Archives for Oil

Beyond Everyday Reality

Beyond Everyday Reality

November 14, 2019 | by

Ethereal and omniscient, often steeped in clouds or fog, the imagery of Wyoming-based painter, Kathryn Mapes Turner, features a mystical blending of physical and spiritual. “My style is inspired by the Celtic word CAOL AIT – places separated by a thin veil, where spaces in the solid world and the realm of spirit come close together,” she says. Bringing that concept to her work, Turner employs brushes and paint as a means of sharing with others the joy and awe of nature that lie deep within her own soul. “My relationship to the natural world is spiritual and, ideally, I
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Essential Elements

Essential Elements

November 14, 2019 | by

“I’m self-taught,” announces Kathryn Stats, painter of sun-washed desert landscapes and vivid still lifes, then quickly adds, “which didn’t mean I didn’t take any lessons; it means I didn’t graduate in anything!” Stats’ artistic journey was unconventional from the start. “I have a great uncle by marriage [LeConte Stewart], who was a fine, fine, well-thought-of artist,” she says. “I rode horses in the summer from morning until night in the same county he lived in. We had his paintings on our walls, and I tended to see landscapes through his eyes. I really think that had an influence.” Initially, that
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‘I’m Called To It’

‘I’m Called To It’

November 13, 2019 | by

Tina Garrett credits her best friend, Laura, with giving her the advice she needed to head down the path to becoming an artist. “She said, ‘You are an artist at heart; stop trying to be something you’re not,’ Garrett recalls. At the time, she had quit her job as a freelance designer and illustrator for a publishing company and was trying to decide what to do next. Her husband Adam, a firefighter and registered nurse, suggested she become a dental hygienist so that, when they retired, they could do traveling nursing and dentistry. The thought of being a dental hygienist,
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A Personal Passion

A Personal Passion

November 8, 2019 | by

When Ralph Oberg was 23, his brother invited him to go to Alaska on a mountain climbing adventure. Oberg was doing architectural renderings and basic graphic design at the time and was completely unsatisfied with the work. The trip to Alaska provided the perfect opportunity to make a change. “When I got the opportunity to quit my job and go climb ice-covered mountains in Alaska, I took it,” Oberg says. “That decision cemented the adventurer in me.” It also gave him a closer glimpse of the glaciers that now have become a hallmark of his work. Since that trip 46
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The Master and His Art

The Master and His Art

November 8, 2019 | by

Richard Schmid is described as a “painter’s painter”—and, oh, what a painter he is. His work is in high demand—as are his books, which include ‘Alla Prima: Everything I Know About Painting,’ which was released in 1998 and is in its 12 printings, and ‘Alla Prima II: Everything I Know About Painting and More,’ which was released in 2013 and currently is in its fifth printing. “At the time I wrote the first edition of ‘Alla Prima,’ I did not think of myself as a prodigy,” Schmid says, “but I realized I had marvelous training in the key aspects of
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The Studio of Peggy Immel

The Studio of Peggy Immel

July 15, 2019 | by

For the past three years, Peggy Immel has been happily painting in a studio south of downtown Taos, New Mexico. Although she says it’s nothing fancy, it certainly meets the needs of the landscape painter, providing her with the space and privacy she needs to create the majestic scenes that have captivated here since she moved to the area 17 years ago. Although Immel spends much of her time painting en plein aire, her studio has everything she needs when she is putting the finishing touches to her work, framing her paintings, or taking care of other business needs that
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Spirit and Splendor

Spirit and Splendor

July 15, 2019 | by

A couple of Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes really speak to oil painter Ron Rencher. One of his favorites is this: “Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.” Rencher currently is in hot pursuit of the beautiful; he’s in the middle of a move to Taos, New Mexico, a place he once lived and still considers his artistic home. During a visit with him in early May, Rencher said he and his wife Carlene were in the thick of moving-related business: renting the U-Haul, closing on the
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Beautiful Moments

Beautiful Moments

July 14, 2019 | by

For nearly 20 years, Utah artist Nicholas Coleman has created realistic paintings, with impressionistic overtones, as he preserves the history of the American West. His Western history and art education began at his father’s side. “[My dad] was always buying me sketchbooks, or we’d go to the art store and get colored pencils or clay,” Coleman says. His father also bought him history books and told stories of cowboys, Native Americans, and mountain men to expand his son’s knowledge of the country’s heritage. As early as age 3, Coleman worked alongside his father, renowned artist Michael Coleman. The younger Coleman
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Passion and Paint

Passion and Paint

July 14, 2019 | by

Churches and cemeteries hold a special fascination—and offer a special inspiration—for Walt Gonske, so much so that he has traveled to several states and foreign countries to capture their beauty and, in essence, to tell their stories. That fascination took hold almost immediately, when Gonske moved from New York City to Taos, New Mexico, 47 years ago. Having spent the first 30 years of his life on the East Coast, he was so taken with New Mexico that, when he visited his sister there in 1971, he went home, saved his money for a year, and made a permanent move
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Aesthetic Visions

Aesthetic Visions

July 14, 2019 | by

Stark rock outcrops towering over desert vistas, waves breaking on a coastal paradise, billowing clouds over serene mountain settings—for many years, those were the images that Glenn Dean most frequently chose to celebrate on canvas. Recently, however, he has expanded his subject matter to encompass the realm of figurative work, as well. “In my early landscapes I avoided painting figures as a way of purifying the landscape,” he says. “People were included on a small scale to show the enormity of a canyon wall, or the size of the clouds. However, beginning in 2012, I transitioned into painting a lot
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