Archives for Oil

The Road to Western Wildlife

The Road to Western Wildlife

December 11, 2023 | by

Carol Lundeen’s love affair with animals of the West began in the 1970s. During a family trip to the Black Hills in South Dakota, she was fascinated by the bison and herds of pronghorn she saw there. “Everywhere you’d look, you could see herds of pronghorn running over the land,” she says. “I was so impressed with their beauty.” It would take many years for art and the fascination with Western wildlife to combine and become a focus for Lundeen. But, here she is today—enthusiastically capturing in oils the animals that made such an impression on her when she was
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Simplicity and Complexity

Simplicity and Complexity

December 11, 2023 | by

Rick Kennington grew up in environments much like those he paints: seemingly endless spaces, mountain backdrops, blue skies, and the steady resolve of cowboys and others whose lives are quietly, solidly entwined with the West. A lifelong resident of Utah, living near the Wasatch Mountains, Kennington’s parents were both from Star Valley, Wyoming, and he spent much of his childhood visiting his grandfather in that area. That’s when the painting began. From his first painting, when he was 18, of his grandfather on a horse, it’s been an ongoing pull toward portraying that life and lifestyle that has kept Kennington
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The Studio of Gladys Roldan-de-Moras

The Studio of Gladys Roldan-de-Moras

December 11, 2023 | by

Magic can occur anywhere. Take, for instance, a busy street in San Antonio, Texas, with five lanes of traffic rushing past a bustling neighborhood of restaurants, doctors’ offices, and an upscale grocery store—where the businesses give way to residential blocks with a sleek, white, modern house that sits behind a cinderblock wall. Unlike the surrounding houses, this one doesn’t sit neatly parallel to the street; it’s at a noticeable slant, facing squarely north. To step through the gates and into the foyer is to step into another world. The rear wall, composed of 15 five-by-seven-foot windowpanes, stretches up, embracing the
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The Studio of Michael Blessing

The Studio of Michael Blessing

October 12, 2023 | by

Michael Blessing is working on a big project that he expects to complete next year. When it’s done, his evolution as an artist will hit a new level. Actually, it will hit two levels. Currently, it’s still in the blueprint stage—a two-level home studio with a view of the Alaska Mountain Range near Anchorage. By the fall of 2024, Blessing will be creating works in a space where Alaska is on permanent display through picture windows revealing a breathtaking panorama that includes both the mountains and the ocean. Read the full article in the November/December 2023 issue. Sentinel Oil 30″
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Peaceful, Spiritual Paintings

Peaceful, Spiritual Paintings

October 12, 2023 | by

In November, Jane Hunt expects to move into her “dream studio” in her family’s home outside of Boulder, Colorado. Building it has been a three-year process, and she’s more than excited to leave behind the small, temporary space she’s been using. It isn’t just the open floor plan and the additional space for new, larger easels that Hunt is anticipating. “The thing I’m most excited about is the view,” she says. “The studio is on the very top of my house, which is on the very top of a mountain so the view is just amazing. It’s a vista as
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Striking Gold

Striking Gold

October 12, 2023 | by

Harper Henry sees gold in everyday things, both figuratively and literally. Her stylized and visually rich depictions of animals and other Western subjects, some of them set against backdrops that incorporate materials such as gold leaf, represent the creative product of someone who is continually collecting and sifting through the things of day-to-day life, as she searches for a telltale glint of something precious. She’s always on the hunt for the proverbial flash in the pan—an expression that had its origin during the Gold Rush, a formative period in the very landscapes that inspire her art. “When an artist is
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Story Teller Extraordinaire

Story Teller Extraordinaire

October 12, 2023 | by

In June of 1973, Clark Kelley Price had just worked a spring roundup in Montana. He had four paintings in his truck and decided to stop at the Jensen Gallery in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on his way home to Utah. He was bedraggled, but he entered the gallery and wandered around, admiring the artwork it housed. A staff member approached him and asked, “Are you an artist?” “Yes, I am,” Price responded. “I can tell by the way you’re studying these paintings,” she said. “What kind of art do you do?” Read the full article in the November/December 2023 issue.
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Creating A Legacy

Creating A Legacy

August 10, 2023 | by

Some people follow sports teams, some follow the stock market. Award-winning artist Mark McKenna follows a herd of wild horses that roams the McCullough Peaks not far from where he lives in Cody, Wyoming. “Just last week, I was able to get some great reference shots of this stallion named Sargent, who recently won over a group of horses from another stallion,” says McKenna, who describes Sargent as being mostly black with significant white markings, including a mane that shifts from black to white to black. “If you’ve ever been around a wild horse, they have so much character, especially
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Sharing Her Light

Sharing Her Light

August 10, 2023 | by

“My goal is to show others how I see the world,” says Kwani Povi Winder. “Being an artist has completely changed how I see it; it’s so incredibly colorful.” While she’s always seen the world and its people as a wondrous place, since 2013 Winder has been sharing her visions—whether they be landscapes, people, spiritual images, or animals—through paintings filled with vibrant colors and brilliant light. “I am constantly analyzing everything before my eyes and trying to identify what made me stop and take a second look at something,” she says. “Was it the contrast, the saturation, or maybe the
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Visual Diaries

Visual Diaries

August 10, 2023 | by

“I spent my childhood on the East Coast, but I think I grew up here,” says Western oil painter Scott Yeager. Here refers to Woodland Park, Colorado, where Yeager and his wife Marie have made their home in the shadow of Pikes Peak for the past 15 years, but he could easily be referring to the West as both specific geography and more abstract concept. He’s come of age as an artist in the sagebrush, beside the rivers, on the flanks of the mountains. He’s camped and hiked, he’s hunted and fished, and all of his experiences in nature have
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