Archives for Still Life

‘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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The Cycle of Life

The Cycle of Life

January 5, 2023 | by

“It’s been a busy 12 years.” That’s how Elizabeth Robbins describes her life since the last time we visited with her. Since then, she’s continued to create masterful paintings that find homes with enthusiastic and appreciative collectors. She’s also added to her repertoire, has started a successful online instructional program and a production company, and has moved to Ogden, Utah. She made that move in late 2013, six years after her husband Jim Pruitt passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack  while mowing the lawn at their home in Kansas. “We had a beautiful marriage,” she says. “He was the
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A Dream Realized

A Dream Realized

January 5, 2023 | by

Dial back 60 years; it’s 1962, and 6-year old Patricia McGeeney is settling into a small studio at the back of Mittel’s Art Supply Store in Santa Monica, California. She is about to take the first steps toward her dream of becoming an artist. Already a prolific drawer of horses, McGeeney has impressed her mother with her artistic skills, so much so that she has signed her daughter up for art lessons in the store’s studio. “The high ceilings, dingy atmosphere, and smell of turpentine had a profound effect on me,” McGeeney says. “I never wanted to do anything else
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‘Light is Everything’

‘Light is Everything’

November 3, 2022 | by

When Sue Krzyston and her husband Mike moved into their new house in Phoenix, Arizona, the bare walls were begging to be filled. Having taken a six-month painting class, and at Mike’s suggestion that she replace the starkness of those walls with her own paintings, Krzyston got to work. Soon their new home was filled with colorful creations. And so it began. Those paintings led to a passionate pursuit of painting, of creating vibrant still lifes that, combined with her love of Native American artifacts, have become a driving force in Krzyston’s life. Her paintings quickly attracted the attention and
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