Archives for Oil

Striking a Balance

Striking a Balance

May 19, 2016 | by

When Jeremy Lipking was 19 years old, he moved from his family’s home in Southern California to the Sierra Nevada mountain range. He had spent a year taking art classes at a community college but wasn’t fully committed to it. What he really wanted was to be outside—hiking in the mountains, rock climbing, and snowboarding on the California slopes. At some point during all of that outdoor activity, an idea occurred to Lipking: If he were to become a landscape artist, he could make a career out of being outside. Jeremy Lipking Ghost Herd Oil 24″x30″ This piece was inspired
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‘It’s All a Challenge’

‘It’s All a Challenge’

May 19, 2016 | by

If the Muse were to visit Len Chmiel, one imagines that he might politely, but firmly, usher her to a chair in the corner of his studio and tell her, “You can watch quietly, but please don’t disturb me while I’m painting.” Chmiel is his own muse. He takes pleasure and pride in owning every phase of the artistic process, from ideation to composition, from blank canvas to finished product, from framing and naming to digitization. Len Chmiel Early to Rise Oil 28″x30″ “The scent of morning coffee, mingling with bougainvillea blazing out loud, rewards a sunrise stroll.” Len Chmiel
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Magnificently Mesmerizing

Magnificently Mesmerizing

May 19, 2016 | by

Romel de la Torre won his first art award at the tender age of 10. Although his parents had supported his interest in art—encouraging him to draw and sketch the world around him—it wasn’t until he appeared on a local TV program to receive his award that they began to think, “Maybe he’s got a talent here.” He did indeed. Since then, de la Torre has earned many awards for his paintings, including the grand prize and artist of the year awards from the Oil Painters of America and, in 2008, a gold medal and the People’s Choice Award from
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Landscape Love Affair

Landscape Love Affair

May 19, 2016 | by

Oh, to live the life of a landscape painter, to be blessed with the ability to see—and put down with paint—the beauty that surrounds us, beauty that too many of us take for granted. Each outing is an adventure, a sensory immersion into the sights, sounds, smells, and feel the great outdoors. Grace Schlesier Show Off (Yosemite in Fall) Oil 16″x20″ “Painting the landscape is where I feel most at home. It makes me happy. My studio work springs from the sketches and studies done on location, since I find nature the best teacher. Larger studio works often take months
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The Studio of Tom Browning

The Studio of Tom Browning

May 19, 2016 | by

The view from Tom Browning’s new studio is worth the price of admission. OK, he doesn’t really charge admission, but if he did, it’d be worth it. Browning’s studio sits atop the home he and his wife Joyce recently built near Bend, Oregon. The couple returned to Oregon in 2014, after a sojourn in Arizona, and lived in a rental home while searching for a spot to build a home of their own. They obviously hit pay dirt on some prime real estate. Tom Browning (Oregon) Barry Oil 18″x15″
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‘Everyday Life Inspires Me’

‘Everyday Life Inspires Me’

March 19, 2016 | by

Andre Kohn’s art teachers at Auburn University figured out quite quickly that he was not a typical student. His drawing and painting skills were already so well developed that they told him to come to class only on the first and last days of the semester. “They said that there was nothing they could teach me,” Kohn says. His English teachers, however, saw much more of Kohn. “I stayed in English 090 for five quarters before I passed,” he admits. “That was much harder for me.” Kohn enrolled at Auburn at the age of 20, shortly after arriving in the
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Timeless Places

Timeless Places

March 19, 2016 | by

In his much-loved memoir “A River Runs Through It,” writer Norman Maclean famously noted, “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly-fishing.” For Brent Cotton, who counts Maclean among his favorite authors, there is no clear line between art and nature, particularly rivers. And for him, both represent a sort of near-religious calling. “Just as Maclean writes at the end of ‘A River Runs Through It’ that he is ‘haunted by waters,’ so am I,” says Cotton, who strives to evoke similar feelings through his art. “There is something magical and enchanting about flowing water and
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Honoring the People of the Past

Honoring the People of the Past

March 19, 2016 | by

Historically speaking, Montana artist Charles Fritz is always historically speaking—well, at least through his paintings. History for him is an enduring passion, and doesn’t show signs of letting up any time soon. “My interest in the history of the West just keeps growing,” he says. “The fur trade era, the Pony Express, the Oregon Trail, the voyageurs, homesteading, the native cultures and the Indian Wars all present great opportunities for paintings. These may seem like unrelated topics, but in actuality they all seamlessly weave one into another, and it becomes one large fascinating story with endless nuances to explore through
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I’m Not Fit For Anything Else

I’m Not Fit For Anything Else

March 19, 2016 | by

The young woman approached Romona Youngquist, during an art show in Scottsdale, Arizona, and asked for her autograph. A little surprised, but pleasantly so, Youngquist obliged. “How the hell did you hear about me?” she blurted out. Youngquist was one of those three artists, and the young woman had chosen her and her work for the assignment. “She was copying my paintings to see how I do things,” Youngquist says, adding that it probably was a tough assignment, because “it’s hard to explain how I do things; I just do them.” Romona Youngquist Autumn Sky Oil 40″x40″ “With this painting
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Mother Nature’s Magic

Mother Nature’s Magic

March 19, 2016 | by

Christine Drewyer (Annapolis, Maryland) Aged to Perfection Oil 30″x30″ “I’m very attracted to a sense of drama. That can be an extraordinary sky, or a fog-filled meadow, or some ancient tree that is just calling me to paint it. I’ve been known to stop and just stand before a tree as if it were the Taj Mahal, and I get this sense of profound wonder and even reverence. There needs to be a connection before I paint something, and I especially love painting at dusk and dawn, when there is an ethereal quality to the light, a veiled sense of
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