Archives for Figurative

The Studio of Don Oelze

The Studio of Don Oelze

April 7, 2025 | by

Some days, Don Oelze’s studio, tucked into a ponderosa forest under a mound of artistic boulders, resembles a movie studio as much as a painting studio. “I have a couple of really big photo shoots at my house every year,” Oelze says, adding that other artists join him for those shoots, which include models in authentic costumes and horses and a wagon outside on a hill. Oelze’s studio is divided into two halves in a 1,400-square-foot outbuilding that is just feet from his house. He currently paints in what he calls Studio B, while most of the props, costumes, and
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Unsung Heroes

Unsung Heroes

April 7, 2025 | by

Creativity has always been the name of the game for Sean Michael Chavez. From a young age, he was driven to study and practice one art form or another—music, writing, design, painting. “I’ve always lived a life centered around creativity,” he says. “I’ve always been an artist and, looking back, to have become a professional artist seems to have been inevitable. It was my path.” That pursuit took Chavez to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1990, the year he graduated from high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He wanted to learn more about himself, about the East Coast, and about art, so
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Watercolor Illusionist

Watercolor Illusionist

February 7, 2025 | by

Richie Vios grew up in a house in Cebu City in the Philippines that was filled with the smell of oil paints, thanks to his father and siblings, who were all painters. “The smell of oil paint was always present in my home,” he says. “That was my childhood smell.” With all that oil painting going on, it’s a little surprising that Vios’ medium today is watercolor. Yes, he says, he did paint with oils with his father when he was in high school, but didn’t plan to become an artist. Instead, he earned a degree in architecture in the
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A Sense of Intimacy

A Sense of Intimacy

February 7, 2025 | by

Since she started exhibiting her work 15 years ago, Naomi Shachar’s emotive oil paintings of Western scenes and personalities have been celebrated and honored in competitions and exhibitions across the country. But, when she was just starting out as an artist, she aimed to please only one critic: her mother, Esther Katz. Seeking her mother’s input wasn’t solely about familiarity or honesty, but more about the respect she had for her mother’s appreciation of good art—her eye for it, her sensibilities. “She had a keen eye for art and could discern quality workmanship of form and color,” says Shachar, who
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A Long and Winding Road

A Long and Winding Road

February 7, 2025 | by

“I’ve probably had a different journey to art than most artists,” says oil painter Lauri Ketchum, in what is actually a monumental understatement. “As a kid, I liked art and had an artistic brother, but I played basketball. I had nothing to do with art, didn’t pursue it whatsoever.” Ketchum’s decidedly uncreative path continued during her college years. “In college I thought, ‘I’ve got to do something that leads to a good job,’ so I went into accounting, which I always hated but which offered good career options,” she says. Three years after earning a degree in accounting from Oklahoma
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The Studio of Donna Howell-Sickles

The Studio of Donna Howell-Sickles

February 7, 2025 | by

Working in a studio that overlooks the historic square in Saint Jo, Texas, Donna Howell-Sickles is surrounded by the tools and atmosphere she needs to create her award-winning paintings and drawings of women who inspire her: cowgirls. She previously worked in a studio—a former church—in the city, but left that behind in 2013, after she and her husband John opened a gallery downtown and renovated that building to include a studio on the second floor. “It turned out to be a fabulous thing,” Howell-Sickles says. “It’s a beautiful space that is much more public than the sanctuary-like space of the
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Putting Scratchboard on the Map

Putting Scratchboard on the Map

December 13, 2024 | by

Like most people in their 20s, Colorado wildlife artist Nelson Tucker spent many of those years carving out his own identity. Today, carving is vital to his art. “I’m going to stick with scratchboard for a while,” he says. “I’ve always had a love for black and white and love the different values and shapes that you can get out of it.” Though he also does pen-and-ink drawings, as well as pencil-on-paper, Tucker’s passion is for scratchboard. Tucker discovered scratchboard art when he was 10 and fell in love with the process of carving into an inked, black surface to
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All is Well in Paradise

All is Well in Paradise

December 13, 2024 | by

Scott Rogers has heard “the voice” speak to him twice. Both times it changed his life. The first time came about after he had purchased a sculpture created by his uncle, Grant Speed. He had seen the sculpture, entitled Rough String, in 1982 and knew he had to have it but, being a college student, he couldn’t afford it. “In 1990, when I had a little money, I called uncle Grant and said I wanted to buy it,” Rogers says. It had sold out, but Speed, through an art gallery, was able to locate one that would soon become available
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Visions in Stone

Visions in Stone

October 9, 2024 | by

When he was in his twenties, Navajo (Diné) Alvin Marshall was traveling to Florence on a grant to study Michelangelo’s David when he had an especially vivid dream. In it, a man spoke to him first in Italian, then in Navajo. “He said, ‘You’re going to see a lot of great art, but don’t take anything from it, because it won’t help you,’” Marshall says. “He said, ‘All of that has already been done; you need to do your own thing.’” Later, at the Galleria Dell’Accademia di Firenze, Marshall recognized the man from his dream in a seated figure that
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The Romance of the West

The Romance of the West

October 9, 2024 | by

Dakota Pitts is on a self-guided journey that began 11 years ago, when he was 23 and took a life drawing class at City College in Long Beach, California. That journey has taken him around the world and has landed his paintings in some impressive art shows and galleries. Pitts’ love of the outdoors traces back to his childhood. Growing up in Long Beach, he spent most of his time drawing, surfing, and skateboarding. “I just wanted to be outside,” he says, adding that he still does. Following his high school graduation, Pitts moved up the coast to Santa Barbara,
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