Archives for Portrait

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
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Storyteller With a Brush

Storyteller With a Brush

August 8, 2024 | by

Patrick Saunders has worked at a variety of jobs, from marketing and teaching to a stint as a Hallmark artist. Today he is a fine artist who paints everything from pet portraits to landscapes to florals. It took quite a while for him to get to where he is today but the route was well worth his effort. One thing that    hasn’t changed over the years, however, is his focus on telling stories with his art. Saunders, who lives in San Antonio, Texas, has earned a myriad of awards for his work, including a gold medal from the Oil
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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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Letting His Voice Find Him

Letting His Voice Find Him

February 8, 2024 | by

When we caught up with Andrew Higdon, the 27-year-old artist had just returned from his honeymoon with his wife Savannah. “When we first got engaged, I laid out my plan for the next 10 years [as an artist] in front of her, and said, ‘This is what this life looks like to me; are you down for this?’” he says. “She said, ‘Absolutely.’ I couldn’t ask for anyone better to walk this journey with.” Higdon credits many kind advisors for helping him put together a roadmap for his life at such a young age but he admits that his future
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It’s Never Too Late

It’s Never Too Late

February 8, 2024 | by

Arkansas oil painter Brenda Morgan’s artistic life currently is a tale of two buffalo—or maybe three. “It’s a long, sad story,” she says with a sigh. “The painting I’m working on is actually a replacement for the Woolaroc/Women Artists of the West Invitational Exhibition in May. I had two buffalo that were going to be in it but now I’m basically repainting one of them, painting the same painting. I varnished it, the same way I varnish all my paintings; I’ve used the same varnish for years. I don’t know what happened.” The varnish, Morgan says, got “a little weird.”
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The Studio of Gladys Roldan-de-Moras

The Studio of Gladys Roldan-de-Moras

December 11, 2023 | by

Magic can occur anywhere. Take, for instance, a busy street in San Antonio, Texas, with five lanes of traffic rushing past a bustling neighborhood of restaurants, doctors’ offices, and an upscale grocery store—where the businesses give way to residential blocks with a sleek, white, modern house that sits behind a cinderblock wall. Unlike the surrounding houses, this one doesn’t sit neatly parallel to the street; it’s at a noticeable slant, facing squarely north. To step through the gates and into the foyer is to step into another world. The rear wall, composed of 15 five-by-seven-foot windowpanes, stretches up, embracing the
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The Studio of Michael Blessing

The Studio of Michael Blessing

October 12, 2023 | by

Michael Blessing is working on a big project that he expects to complete next year. When it’s done, his evolution as an artist will hit a new level. Actually, it will hit two levels. Currently, it’s still in the blueprint stage—a two-level home studio with a view of the Alaska Mountain Range near Anchorage. By the fall of 2024, Blessing will be creating works in a space where Alaska is on permanent display through picture windows revealing a breathtaking panorama that includes both the mountains and the ocean. Read the full article in the November/December 2023 issue. Sentinel Oil 30″
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Embracing the Challenge

Embracing the Challenge

June 15, 2023 | by

Paul Van Ginkel will tell you he’s an all-in kind of guy. Every time he does something, he challenges himself to do it better than ever before. That kind of tenacity and ambition paid off in early March when Van Ginkel, who lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, learned that he’d been nominated for the prestigious Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award. The winner will be honored at a ceremony in September. Although he’s not a stranger to awards—there have been many—he was particularly pleased that his patrons were so insistent on nominating him to be recognized for his outstanding
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A Compelling Medium

A Compelling Medium

June 15, 2023 | by

With its mix of pigments and powders, pastel preceded all other mediums. The proof is on the walls of caves painted with mineral oxide pigments. Pastel is the only medium for painter and mountaineer Nori Thorne, a longtime collaborator with nature and paint. From the gritty, finger-staining application to its flexibility and even its fragility, pastel is the mode of choice for Thorne, who finds herself celebrated in a genre often associated with large-format oils or bold acrylics. “We’re really the red-headed step-children of the art world,” she says. “But pastel has been around since we were humans. That’s what’s
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The Beauty of Batik

The Beauty of Batik

May 4, 2023 | by

Echo Ukrainetz starts each new batik piece with a black and white vintage photo, usually a portrait of a person with an expressive, interesting but not necessarily attractive, face. She sketches the photo, then traces her sketch onto high-grade cotton stretched on a frame and draws in the details of the face. Then Ukrainetz works, sometimes for more than a month, dying and waxing each section—the shirt, the pants, the boots, then the face, and finally the background—until her stretched cotton is as stiff as a piece of cardboard. She freezes it and breaks specific segments of wax before rubbing
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