Archives for Portrait

Spiritual Connection

Spiritual Connection

March 18, 2017 | by

Riding, roping, and sculpting are the things Greg Kelsey’s dreams are made of. Deep inside this sculptor beats the heart of a cowboy. He is the intrepid soul who likes to stand on the precipice of the future and hurl himself headlong over the edge to pursue his dreams. If it doesn’t always look real pretty, chalk it up to opportunities—not challenges—that have served well him during his 45 years on this earth. From childhood on, Kelsey was drawn to the natural world, coming from a long line of ranchers and rural dwellers. He also was drawn to art at
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Truth, Beauty, and Happy Accidents

Truth, Beauty, and Happy Accidents

March 18, 2017 | by

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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The Studio of Glen and Barbara Edwards

The Studio of Glen and Barbara Edwards

January 18, 2017 | by

The couple’s main home is in Smithfield, Utah. They purchased it in December 1987 to be close to Utah State University in Logan, Utah, where Glen was a professor of art. Both artists love nature, especially trees, so when they discovered a property surrounded by trees of all kinds—poplar, blue spruce, maple, juniper, Austrian pine—they knew they were home. Forty years ago, Western artists Glen and Barbara Edwards decided that their summer home in Star Valley, Wyoming, lacked a fundamental tool of their trade: a studio. So, along with Glen’s brother, a chain saw, and a book on carpentry, they
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Magical Connections

Magical Connections

November 19, 2016 | by

While strolling through a gallery, a painting catches your eye: an intricately portrayed primitive clay pot set against a stark black background. It’s a complicated design, dramatically displayed. You’re drawn to the simple artifact, looking deeper for meaning you can feel but can’t see. That is exactly the effect Santa Fe, New Mexico, artist Roseta Santiago hopes to elicit. Painting these artifacts, she says, is like looking into the window of the ancient peoples’ souls and retelling their history. When she looks at a piece of pottery, Santiago doesn’t see just a geometric, complex design, although it’s clearly visible. What
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Making a Life’s Work from One Trip

Making a Life’s Work from One Trip

November 19, 2016 | by

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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Defying Definition

Defying Definition

November 19, 2016 | by

Tim Solliday’s paintings do not lend themselves to easy categorization. Clicking through the slides on his website once, twice, a couple dozen times, my eyes linger on the expressive faces, the light-drenched landscapes. Are these works realistic? Well, no, not exactly. No human eyes have ever been that wise or that kind. No natural light is quite so warm and inviting. I’m not looking at reality; I’m looking at something with more beauty and more potential for magic than mere prosaic reality. I find myself looking to literature instead, where there’s a term that feels close to apt: magical realism,
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A Long Time Coming

A Long Time Coming

September 19, 2016 | by

Mark Maggiori fell in love with the American West when he was a 15-year-old on vacation with his uncle and cousin. It was so different from his home in Paris, France, that he couldn’t help but be charmed by the wide-open spaces, the rugged terrain, and the hard-working cowboys. But when he returned to France, his attention quickly returned to his skateboard and his studies, and the romance of the West was forgotten. Almost 20 years later, Maggiori found himself at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. By then, he had finished his formal art
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‘This is My Calling’

‘This is My Calling’

September 19, 2016 | by

Best known for his magnificent stone carvings, Oreland Joe also puts his artistic skills to good use in creating bronze sculptures, as well as paintings and jewelry. His creativity doesn’t end there, however. “I’ve ventured into filmmaking and am writing a book,” he says, adding that the process for both will take two to three years to complete. “The film is an historic documentary about a 4-year-old Ute boy who was stolen by the Cheyenne in 1849. He was called Yellow Nose and was adopted and raised by Spotted Wolf, head chief of the Northern Cheyenne. At age 12, there
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‘There Was Always a Plan’

‘There Was Always a Plan’

September 19, 2016 | by

Patient and painstakingly precise as he creates masterworks in oil, Canadian artist Bruce Lawes evokes an equally dedicated passion when it comes to shaping his own artistic destiny. His first painting sale at the age of 12 confirmed his innate artistic abilities, but the direction that talent would take was not clarified until six years later, when his father brought home a stunning coffee table book titled “The Art of Robert Bateman.” “I was absolutely mesmerized by his imagery,” Lawes says. “It brought my love for nature into focus and defined my goal to be able to paint like Bateman
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Putting Light Into the World

Putting Light Into the World

September 19, 2016 | by

“I try to be attentive, as I walk through life. It’s a spiritual thing for me, as well as an artistic thing. I see inspiration as God’s gift to humanity. You just have to be open to it and tap into it. Painting is my way of saying ‘Amen’ visually, of saying I’m in agreement with the beauty and mystery of this world.” Those “amens” have not gone unnoticed by art lovers, who eagerly collect the paintings Michelle Dunaway creates, paintings in which she skillfully shares her love of the world—its people and its land. In each, she finds stories
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