Archives for Figurative

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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Living History

Living History

August 8, 2024 | by

“To be a frontiersman, I thought I needed a horse and a rifle,” artist Doug Hall says of his childhood in southwest Missouri, where he did his best to imitate his heroes, Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton. That meant spending his days in a tipi in his parents’ backyard and, at age 15, skipping school to buy a flintlock rifle. “I’ve been shooting one ever since,” he says. That story is a fitting example of how Hall has lived his life, bucking convention in favor of the way things used to be. He has won black powder rifle matches, roamed
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‘It’s Been a Wondrous Career’

‘It’s Been a Wondrous Career’

August 8, 2024 | by

Jack Sorenson remembers the day his cowboy lifestyle collided with his dreams of being an artist. He was 9 years old and helping to break a horse on the family’s dude ranch and frontier town located on the rim of the Palo Duro Canyon—not far from Amarillo, Texas. He remembers being bucked off that horse—and he remembers what he was thinking as it happened. “Between the time I left the saddle and the time I hit the ground, I had the thought to protect my right arm,” Sorenson says. Now, as he turns 70, the toll of all the tumbles
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‘I Love Beauty’

‘I Love Beauty’

June 6, 2024 | by

Larry Riley pulled back a bit from painting a few years ago but he didn’t pull back from creating. During COVID, when galleries were closed, he turned away from his easel and began to make classical guitars. It wasn’t the first time during his 76 years on earth that he veered from the road he was on and let his curiosity lead him. He’s taken chances—and reaped rewards—by mapping his own route. In 1982, after spending nine years taking care of people’s teeth, Riley sold his dentistry practice and turned to fine art. Later, after spending about 40 years as
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Cowboy Storyteller

Cowboy Storyteller

April 10, 2024 | by

“I need a wife,” laments accomplished New Mexico oil painter JaNeil Anderson. She is mostly joking; she has been happily married to her husband Walt for many years, working side by side with him on their cattle ranch beside the Gila River. But, as she notes, it’s not uncommon for the wives of male artists to take on much of the ancillary work that surrounds making and selling art: marketing, framing, accounting, and other supportive and administrative tasks. “My men artist friends all have wives,” Anderson says. “The wife does all the show entries and all the paperwork; the men
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