A drive to yoga class about 10 years ago provided an aha moment for Teresa Elliott. As she drove by a pasture of longhorns, she was so taken by what she saw that she returned the next day and took photographs of them. “There was a bull there,” she says. “It was hot, and he was miserable and stomping his feet. I took a snapshot and went back home and that was my first painting.” Little did Elliott realize how popular her longhorn portraits would become, how eagerly collectors would seek them out. She painted them because she loved them
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Archives for Oil
Personal Inspiration
Robert Peters is talking to me on the phone, but he’d rather be painting. As a successful Western landscape artist with a 30-plus-year track record, he understands the necessity of the peripheral aspects of the artistic life: the marketing hustle, the gallery shows, the website design, the research, the magazine profiles. Peters is a good sport, answering my many questions in a friendly and engaging way. But, as he speaks, I picture him pacing his studio in Prescott, Arizona, hoping the clear morning light will last longer than our conversation. I picture him frowning thoughtfully at an in-progress canvas, making
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Eiteljorg Museum Receives Multimillion-Dollar Art Collection
Imagine, if you will, that you receive a phone call from someone telling you that you soon will be receiving a gift. When that gift arrives, you open it and find inside millions of dollars worth of artwork—paintings by the likes of Frederic Remington, Charles Russell, N. C. Wyeth, and Howard Terpning, along with magnificently crafted Native American artifacts. You are stunned. You are thrilled. And you are grateful. That is exactly how the folks at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, Indiana, felt when the attorney for the estate of the late K. S.
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The Studio of Lori Putnam
An affinity for Italy led Lori Putnam and her husband Mark to sell everything they owned in 2008, pull up stakes, and move there for eight months, where Putnam spent the time absorbing the countryside and translating that experience into her art. When they returned to the United States early the next year, the economy was beginning to tank. Mark was searching for a suitable job and, rather than get tied to a mortgage, they chose to rent an apartment, until they felt more stable. The only logical option was to build a studio they could live in. The result
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Cowboy Artists of America Celebrates 50th Anniversary
With the celebration of the Cowboy Artists of America’s 50th anniversary, one has to wonder if the founding artists—Joe Beeler, Charlie Dye, John Hampton, and George Phippen—could have envisioned what the organization would become and that it would still be going strong five decades later. Those four men, along with dozens of others who were invited to join the prestigious organization over the years, were committed to creating authentic representations of life—and work—in the American West and to doing so with the highest of artistic standards. Four members of the CAA—John Coleman, Martin Grelle, Bill Nebeker, and Jim Norton—recently took
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‘It Has to Hit Home’
Colorado is home to Jay Moore—always has been and likely always will be. And why not? It has everything this talented landscape painter could possibly want, when it comes to subject matter—from creeks and rivers to aspen groves and mountains. Throw in the magnificent wildlife that occasionally makes its way into one of Moore’s paintings, and it’s clear that he is exactly where he should be. Colorado’s lifestyle also appeals to Moore, who grew up in Evergreen, a sleepy little town with a creek running through it and a lake nearby for fishing in the summer and skating in the
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The Joy of Painting
Suchitra Bhosle was in Seattle, Washington, looking for a job that would put her new MBA degree to good use, when she received news that her father had passed away. She put her job search on hold to travel back to her native India—and returned to the United States with an entirely different focus in mind. Back in Seattle, Bhosle stopped sending out resumes and started looking for workshops that would help develop the aptitude she had always had for art. Suchitra Bhosle Arches of II duomo De Taormina Oil 16″ x 12″ “The movement of the interior light of
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Chasing Light
In early July, recently home from a trip to Ireland, Michael Godfrey was excited about the landscape he saw there, some of which he sketched on his new Galaxy tablet and will later transform into completed pieces in his home studio. That trip, he says, had long been on his bucket list and became a reality, when Godfrey’s wife Kim arranged the adventure. Godfrey has been fascinated by the great outdoors since he was a young boy. “I was born in Germany and was an Army brat,” he says, adding that, when his father was transferred back to the States,
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Creating New Challenges
Carrie Ballantyne once told a young cowgirl that she didn’t think she was much of a storyteller. Her paintings—portraits of western men, women and children, often focused mostly on their faces—were too limited, she said, to tell stories. “This young cowgirl looked so surprised,” Ballantyne remembers. “She stopped me and said that she saw a story in every face I portrayed.” That revelation changed everything for Ballantyne. Carrie Ballantyne (Wyoming) Wyoming Flower Child Oil 18″x14″ “I have been lucky, through the years, to be able to work with my family and close friends. It makes my job more pleasurable, when
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Lorenzo’s Land
Lorenzo Chavez loved faces. He loved looking at them; he loved painting them. When he started to paint outside with a friend, however, he tossed his dream of being a portrait painter aside and began a love affair with the land. Whether he is painting the desert, the ocean, or the foothills near his home in Parker, Colorado, Chavez is totally committed to capturing and sharing his feeling of excitement at what he sees before him. Lorenzo Chavez A Winter Landscape Pastel 16″x20″ “After a new snowfall, the sun will enlighten the colors with strong varieties of warm and cool
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