Archives for Landscape

Impressionistic Naturalism

Matt Smith has been selling his paintings since the early ‘80s, when he was just 17, but when asked when he realized that he really was an artist, he laughs and says, “I don’t know that I am yet. I know I’m a painter, but I don’t know if I’ve graduated to really being an artist. I’m continually trying to improve and take it to the next level.” Smith’s paintings have earned him inclusion in several prestigious art shows, including the Prix de West and Masters of the American West, and are eagerly sought after by art enthusiasts from around
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‘My Thing is the City’

It’s Friday evening, dark and rainy, and you’re caught in a traffic jam in the city, grinding your teeth and muttering a few expletives after a long, tiring week at the office. While you’re fuming, standing outside, armed with his camera, is Mark Lague, a Canadian artist, who finds beauty and excitement in painting scenes such as the one in which you find yourself trapped. “I’ve always been attracted to the city thing, but mostly on a visual level,” Lague says. “I love to paint cars, traffic jams, and the architectural elements around it.” And he does so beautifully, injecting
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Striking a Balance

When Jeremy Lipking was 19 years old, he moved from his family’s home in Southern California to the Sierra Nevada mountain range. He had spent a year taking art classes at a community college but wasn’t fully committed to it. What he really wanted was to be outside—hiking in the mountains, rock climbing, and snowboarding on the California slopes. At some point during all of that outdoor activity, an idea occurred to Lipking: If he were to become a landscape artist, he could make a career out of being outside. Jeremy Lipking Ghost Herd Oil 24″x30″ This piece was inspired
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‘It’s All a Challenge’

If the Muse were to visit Len Chmiel, one imagines that he might politely, but firmly, usher her to a chair in the corner of his studio and tell her, “You can watch quietly, but please don’t disturb me while I’m painting.” Chmiel is his own muse. He takes pleasure and pride in owning every phase of the artistic process, from ideation to composition, from blank canvas to finished product, from framing and naming to digitization. Len Chmiel Early to Rise Oil 28″x30″ “The scent of morning coffee, mingling with bougainvillea blazing out loud, rewards a sunrise stroll.” Len Chmiel
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Magnificently Mesmerizing

Romel de la Torre won his first art award at the tender age of 10. Although his parents had supported his interest in art—encouraging him to draw and sketch the world around him—it wasn’t until he appeared on a local TV program to receive his award that they began to think, “Maybe he’s got a talent here.” He did indeed. Since then, de la Torre has earned many awards for his paintings, including the grand prize and artist of the year awards from the Oil Painters of America and, in 2008, a gold medal and the People’s Choice Award from
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Landscape Love Affair

Oh, to live the life of a landscape painter, to be blessed with the ability to see—and put down with paint—the beauty that surrounds us, beauty that too many of us take for granted. Each outing is an adventure, a sensory immersion into the sights, sounds, smells, and feel the great outdoors. Grace Schlesier Show Off (Yosemite in Fall) Oil 16″x20″ “Painting the landscape is where I feel most at home. It makes me happy. My studio work springs from the sketches and studies done on location, since I find nature the best teacher. Larger studio works often take months
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Timeless Places

In his much-loved memoir “A River Runs Through It,” writer Norman Maclean famously noted, “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly-fishing.” For Brent Cotton, who counts Maclean among his favorite authors, there is no clear line between art and nature, particularly rivers. And for him, both represent a sort of near-religious calling. “Just as Maclean writes at the end of ‘A River Runs Through It’ that he is ‘haunted by waters,’ so am I,” says Cotton, who strives to evoke similar feelings through his art. “There is something magical and enchanting about flowing water and
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Honoring the People of the Past

Historically speaking, Montana artist Charles Fritz is always historically speaking—well, at least through his paintings. History for him is an enduring passion, and doesn’t show signs of letting up any time soon. “My interest in the history of the West just keeps growing,” he says. “The fur trade era, the Pony Express, the Oregon Trail, the voyageurs, homesteading, the native cultures and the Indian Wars all present great opportunities for paintings. These may seem like unrelated topics, but in actuality they all seamlessly weave one into another, and it becomes one large fascinating story with endless nuances to explore through
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I’m Not Fit For Anything Else

The young woman approached Romona Youngquist, during an art show in Scottsdale, Arizona, and asked for her autograph. A little surprised, but pleasantly so, Youngquist obliged. “How the hell did you hear about me?” she blurted out. Youngquist was one of those three artists, and the young woman had chosen her and her work for the assignment. “She was copying my paintings to see how I do things,” Youngquist says, adding that it probably was a tough assignment, because “it’s hard to explain how I do things; I just do them.” Romona Youngquist Autumn Sky Oil 40″x40″ “With this painting
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Simple Serenity

Pristine and peaceful, the paintings of Canadian artist Jeremy Browne are a celebration of freedom, nature’s beauty, and man’s relationship to the natural environment. Like Monet’s haystack imagery, which explores the perception of light across various times of the day, seasons and weather conditions, Browne’s paintings create similar visual essays that celebrate his own fascination with the inherent natural beauty found in rustic, rural homesteads enhanced by the glow of sunrise, evening shadows, or moonlight reflections on a snow-covered landscape. Born in 1977 in Brampton, Ontario, Canada, Browne’s early upbringing imbued him with an inherent love for the simplicity of
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