Archives for Landscape

Romance and Reality

Acclaim comes when artists paint what they know best, and for Utah-based watercolorist Ian Ramsay those subjects are harbors and boats. “The love of ships is in my blood,” he says. “I am almost convinced the source of my passion is genetic, because I can trace it back to both sides of my family. My paternal grandfather serviced vessels docked in Woolwich, a naval shipyard on the Thames River in London. He often took me along with him to work, and we spent a lot of time in the engine room. To this day, I can still recall the smell
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Truth, Beauty, and Happy Accidents

Ask Eric Bowman what he does for fun, when he isn’t painting and you might get a long, slightly self-conscious silence, followed by this sheepish admission: “When I’m not painting, I’m thinking about painting.” Bowman spends long days in his backyard studio in northwest Oregon, patiently creating richly textured oil paintings in a style he describes as “not as tight as realism, but not as abstract as impressionism.” Sometimes he paints figures, sometimes he paints landscapes, and occasionally he does a still life. On the rare days Bowman feels uninspired, he attends to the busywork that goes along with being
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King of the Canyon

Curt Walters is a man on the move, geographically as well as artistically. He has traveled to, and painted in, several countries—Spain, England, Italy, France, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Indonesia, Jordan, Mexico, and Switzerland—and, although he has made a name for himself with his magnificently rendered landscapes, he also now is painting some figures, but more about that later. Now living in Sedona, Arizona, Walters grew up in New Mexico, the son of a dentist, who also painted on occasion. When the elder Walters gave his daughter a paint set, his son quickly stole it and began to follow a
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‘Painting is a Spiritual Thing’

It’s not unusual for Grace Schlesier to get up before the sun rises, grab a cup of coffee, and head outside to her gardens, still wearing her robe, set up her paints, and begin to capture the beautiful flowers she lovingly tends to on her one-acre property in San Diego, California. “If I’m going to paint my flower garden, I decide the day before what I’m going to do and get everything, except the paints, set up for the next morning,” she says. “I have no preconceived ideas. I want to be flexible; I want to let the scene pull
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Making a Life’s Work from One Trip

One of the earliest white artists to portray life in the West, Alfred Jacob Miller had no idea he was headed that way, until an unexpected 1837 encounter with a Scotsman, who hired him to document the trip through illustrations. Their ensuing journey was Miller’s only westward travel. However, he found so much inspiration and made so many sketches from that one journey that it sustained commissions for the rest of his life. Miller, who made a career out of one trip, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in January 1810, the first of nine children in a family of comfortable
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Sweet Sixteen

Contacted in mid-August to see if he would be available on the following Wednesday afternoon to do the interview for this article, Kyle Ma replied, “That won’t work; I’ll be in school.” If all you knew about Ma was that he creates beautifully rendered paintings of everything from landscapes and seascapes to flowers and chickens, you would quite naturally assume that the reason he would be in school on a Wednesday was that he would be teaching art classes. And you would be oh, so wrong. Ma is taking classes, not teaching them. You see, this remarkable painter is a
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Celebrating America’s National Parks

On August 25, 1916, with a stroke of a pen, President Woodrow Wilson signed an act that created the National Park Service—and that would result, 100 years later, in the protection and preservation of 59 national parks, encompassing approximately 51.9 million acres in 27 states. That act was inspired, in large part, by the Hudson River School painters, who eagerly painted the majestic landscape of the West. Perhaps best known is Thomas Moran, who became famous for his paintings of the Rocky Mountains and whose Western landscapes are credited as being critical to the creation of Yellowstone National Park. In
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A Visual Poet

California artist Dan Pinkham wants to leave behind a legacy. Yes, his paintings will continue to be his spiritual voice into perpetuity, but he wants there to be more. His studio, a 16th century replica of the Italian Chapel that Michelangelo used as a studio when he painted the Sistine Chapel, will be that legacy. Pinkham and his wife Vicki, along with a nephew and fellow artists, have spent years refurbishing this relic. In fact, when they first saw the property, slated for demolition, it presented a daunting undertaking that neither Pinkham nor his wife felt inclined to tackle. Besides,
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I Just Have To Paint It

Jim Norton was, as he puts it, “scared to death.” He was pale and had a terrible headache, but he stood by his paintings, with a smile on his face, determined to suffer through what he anticipated was going to be a rather humiliating experience. The cause of Norton’s distress was his first showing with the prestigious Cowboy Artists of America (CAA). He was elected into membership in 1989, when he was just 34 years old, and was overwhelmed by the company he would be keeping—artists such as Howard Terpning, Robert Pummell, Roy Andersen, Jim Reynolds, and Ken Riley. Jim
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The Studio of Jesse Powell

Last spring, California artist Jesse Powell moved his studio from Cannery Row to the Barnyard. Yes, you read that right. But, it’s not exactly what you might think. He spent eight years in a studio in the historic American Tin Cannery Building on Cannery Row in Monterey, California. That studio looked out on the Pacific Ocean from the third floor of the former home of one of the sardine canneries that had sprouted up during the 1920s and 1930s. The 12-foot-tall windows let in plenty of natural light, and the view was spectacular, but when a space opened up in
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