Archives for Still Life

The Romance of the West

The Romance of the West

October 9, 2024 | by

Dakota Pitts is on a self-guided journey that began 11 years ago, when he was 23 and took a life drawing class at City College in Long Beach, California. That journey has taken him around the world and has landed his paintings in some impressive art shows and galleries. Pitts’ love of the outdoors traces back to his childhood. Growing up in Long Beach, he spent most of his time drawing, surfing, and skateboarding. “I just wanted to be outside,” he says, adding that he still does. Following his high school graduation, Pitts moved up the coast to Santa Barbara,
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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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The Studio

The Studio

August 8, 2024 | by

Kyle Polzin’s studio at his home in Austin, Texas, isn’t a grand, architectural space but it suits him just fine. A former study, the room is just off the entryway to the home he shares with his wife Leigh and their two teenage daughters. Surrounded by oak trees, his house sits on one-and-a-half acres of property in a quaint neighborhood that overlooks Austin and the surrounding hill country. Earlier this summer, Polzin was hard at work in his studio, preparing paintings for a show he’ll have in September at Legacy Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The painting resting on
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‘There’s a Method to My Madness’

‘There’s a Method to My Madness’

June 6, 2024 | by

Fruit, fabric, and flexibility are three key elements in the process watercolorist Chris Krupinski uses as she creates award-winning paintings in the studio at her home in Cincinnati, Ohio. Fruits—everything from Chinese lantern plants and clementines to grapes and pears—are the focal points of her vibrantly colored paintings. Fabric—in the form of quilts—add interesting shapes and shadows, as well as texture that differs from other items in her compositions. Flexibility enters the picture as Krupinski composes her paintings. “I love the flexibility of being able to create my own designs,” she says of the still life paintings that have earned
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Living Her Dream

Living Her Dream

June 6, 2024 | by

At this year’s Art of the Cowgirl event in Queen Creek, Arizona, Chinese-born still life painter Yun Wei earned the title of Reserve Champion of the Quick Draw—a competition in which artists rapidly complete a painting on-site. Her winning piece features an intricately detailed leather saddle, the sort of subjects she has fallen in love with since moving to California more than a decade ago. “When I began painting Western subjects, I posed a saddle on the table, and a gallery owner told me not to do that,” Wei recalls. “She said, ‘You can put it on a trunk, or
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Riding New Waves

Riding New Waves

April 10, 2024 | by

Daniel Keys is successful, inspired—and inspiring. He’s earned prestigious awards for his paintings, which are included in collections throughout the world, and is inspired by the beauty around him. He’s also generous, giving back through two programs he developed to encourage young artists: the Sierra Art Group and the Palette Project. He got the idea for both programs while painting with the late master artist Richard Schmid, who had formed the Putney Painters on the East Coast. “I wanted to replicate that, so I started the Sierra Art Group,” Keys says, adding that the group paints together at A Sense
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‘I Like Variety’

‘I Like Variety’

April 10, 2024 | by

Dana Lombardo has a 9 to 5 job, but it doesn’t take her far from her art projects. Both, in fact, are usually in the same room. Lombardo is a contract specialist for a hospital and lives in Grand Lake, at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains in the northeast corner of Oklahoma. Since the pandemic, she’s been able to work from home, setting up her office in her art studio. “It’s great because I can sit across the room and stare at [one of my paintings], and say it needs this or it needs that,” Lombardo says. “I can
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‘It’s A Fine Life’

‘It’s A Fine Life’

December 11, 2023 | by

“I’m 88 years old. I still love to paint, so I’m in the studio every day,” says Chuck Sabatino, whose paintings have been wowing art aficionados for almost four decades. “I also love to golf with friends and am not very good at it. They tell me, ‘Stay home and paint!’” While Sabatino loves golfing, he loves painting more. That’s why he’s in the studio at his home in north Scottsdale, Arizona, seven days a week. He arrives there at 9 a.m. each day and works until about 2 p.m., following that with reading and doing research for future paintings. 
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A Continual Pursuit

A Continual Pursuit

August 10, 2023 | by

David Dorsey takes great care to create Western paintings that are realistic rather than photorealistic. His goal is to move viewers to become involved, to fill in the blanks. “I want viewers to look at a piece and be able to become connected to the image by allowing them to interpret areas within the piece that are not as defined as others,” Dorsey says. “I am always trying to move toward a looser feel and more expressive brushwork in my pieces.” A Nebraska native, Dorsey lives within 75 miles of his childhood home in Newport. “I’m from a ranching family,”
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The Studio of Roseta Santiago

The Studio of Roseta Santiago

May 4, 2023 | by

New Mexico artist Roseta Santiago is a storyteller. She has a seemingly infinite intellectual storehouse of anecdotes and people swirling around in her head that spill out in even the most mundane conversation. The same way that Santiago cultivates emotional connections with people and objects and infuses them into her art, she has also done so in her studio. In January, Santiago was hard at work preparing for a retrospective at the Woolaroc Museum & Wildlife Preserve in Osage County, Oklahoma. One of only 11 artists who will be featured at the show in October, she is thrilled to be
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