Archives for Genre

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
Read More

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
Read More

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
Read More

Pushing Boundaries

Pushing Boundaries

February 7, 2025 | by

For Nebraska native Todd A. Williams, capturing beauty and rendering it in ways that excite viewers on multiple levels is his greatest love. His distinctive way of texturing paint and his paint quality and manipulation allow viewers to take in the entire design and the overall harmony of the visual layout whether they’re up close, studying details, or standing at a distance. “I love it when I can reveal the entire process of creation from the drawing and abstract underpainting to the finished areas of refinement,” Williams says. “The belief in the process of creation is just as important as
Read More

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
Read More

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
Read More

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
Read More

His Art Speaks for Itself

His Art Speaks for Itself

December 13, 2024 | by

Duke Beardsley doesn’t really have a name for what he creates. “People say things like the new West, contemporary West, all these things,” he says, while declining to offer his own alternative labels. “I never really think about what to call it.” Instead, Beardsley lets his art speak for itself—and it does, in repeating motifs, pop-art-reminiscent stylings and palettes, and other attributes that defy the conventions and expectations that surround Western art. As his eye-catching pieces find homes in ever-increasing shows and collections, he continues to push the boundaries. A few months ago, Beardsley was in his studio in Denver,
Read More

A Love Story

A Love Story

December 13, 2024 | by

Texas artist Tony Pro is currently preparing paintings he will exhibit at Night of Artists at the Briscoe Western Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas, in March. It’s his third year in the show, and he’s excited about it, calling his works for that event a love story to the American West and to his own artistic trajectory. “The unique component of my art is the narrative depth,” he says. “Each piece tells a profound story, reflecting personal and historical themes. This storytelling, combined with my technical expertise and attention to cultural and historical details, sets my work apart.” Pro
Read More

Portraits of the West

Portraits of the West

October 9, 2024 | by

The three best gifts you could give to Cindy Long are a pencil, paper, and a man with a weathered old face. Then give her a few weeks to work her magic. The result will be a detailed, black-and-white portrait that will have you studying each line, each shadow, the eyes, the face. It will also have you wondering who he is, what he’s thinking, and what he’s experienced. And that’s exactly what Long wants. “I want to convey the depth and personalities of my people—an emotion, a mood, the story behind the eyes,” she says, adding that the same
Read More