Archives for Oil

Basking in the Glow

December 8, 2025 | by Madeline Cisneros

Jennifer Wendt’s first loves were animals. Growing up on a small 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
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The Studio of Karin Hollebeke

December 8, 2025 | by Vicki Stavig

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

October 8, 2025 | by Vicki Stavig

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

October 8, 2025 | by Sara Gilbert Frederick

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

October 8, 2025 | by Clover Cameron

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

October 8, 2025 | by Joe Tougas

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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‘I Let the Land Speak to Me’

October 8, 2025 | by Vicki Stavig

Landscape artist Scott Christensen doesn’t let a painting go out the door until he is convinced that it is as perfect as it can be. And he doesn’t rush the process. “I’ve had some of my paintings for six to eight years,” he says. “I save them to see what the problems are.” He puts them away or turns them to the wall until he can look at them with a fresh eye and change anything that might need changing. Christensen’s self-imposed standards are high—and he paints because he loves to do so, not to win awards. “I don’t
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The Magic of the Desert

October 8, 2025 | by Madeline Cisneros

Canyons erupting from the earth. Cotton candy clouds looming over sunbaked cacti. Cowboys defying gravity, their weathered hands gripping the reins as their horses catapult them into the air. To landscape artist Josh Gibson, the desert Southwest is a powerful place. “It seems like, in terms of the geological formations and the kind of weather, there just aren’t other places that have that sort of thing going on,” he says. “The sunsets every day are a 10 out of 10. There are mountains that are huge blocks of rock coming out of very desolate desert plains. I haven’t really
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Keeping It Fresh

August 7, 2025 | by Clover Cameron

“I don’t like clichés,” says Western artist Brett James Smith. He recognizes that his chosen genre is replete with familiar tropes: the backlit pastoral scene, the regal Native American chief, the faithful dog, the sunlit brook, the swaggering cowboy. Although you will find those landscapes and figures in Smith’s portfolio, he is determined to paint them in such a way that you won’t mistake his work for anyone else’s. “I’m always looking for a fresher look at any subject,” he says. “My number one priority is to do things that haven’t been done, or at least to bring something
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The Beauty of Birds

August 7, 2025 | by Joe Tougas

As long as there are birds in the skies, Bill Rice will sculpt them. That’s essentially the work ethic, the focus, and the passion with which he has been operating for more than 40 years as an artist who specializes in avian wood carvings. The winner of several awards, including the 2024 People’s Choice Award at the Adirondack Experience Museum in Blue Mountain, New York, Rice’s home is in an area of Connecticut where he can walk outside and see different types of birds every day. Summer walks with his wife, photographer Brooke Rice, present endless subject matter. “This
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Archives for Oil

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