Archives for Wildlife

Kindred Spirits

Kindred Spirits

April 10, 2024 | by

Matthew Hillier and Julia Rogers have a special connection. They share a love of wildlife, landscapes, and water. They respect each other’s talent and cheer each other on. And, they’re married—to each other. The two met at an art show in Tacoma, Washington, in the 1990s and continued to connect at other shows for a few years before they began long distance dating. At the time, Hillier was living in Florida, and Rogers was living in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland. They married in 2001 and lived in a suburb of Washington, D.C. for a time, but Rogers missed living in Chesapeake
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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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Full Steam Ahead

Full Steam Ahead

February 8, 2024 | by

During the past six months, J.R. Hess has been living his dream life. He moved to Colorado with his wife Molly and their two teenage sons, Cass and River, he’s got studio space in his new home in Loveland, and his photorealistic wildlife drawings hang in galleries in Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to get to this point,” Hess says. “I am so thankful, so happy to be doing what I’m doing. I’m still new at this but I know that I’m so fortunate to be able to do what I love to do.”
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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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Blazing His Own Trail

Blazing His Own Trail

December 11, 2023 | by

During his 40-plus years as a photographer, David Yarrow has been held at gunpoint, chased by a hippopotamus, and suffered hypothermia when his raft capsized in the Arctic Ocean. No matter what he encounters in the field, however, it is the art world that keeps him up at night. “My biggest fear is to bore people,” he says. Yarrow’s life has been anything but boring. Born in 1966 in Glasgow, Scotland, his childhood love of sports led him to pick up a camera when he was a teenager. He learned his craft on the job while photographing local sporting matches
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The Road to Western Wildlife

The Road to Western Wildlife

December 11, 2023 | by

Carol Lundeen’s love affair with animals of the West began in the 1970s. During a family trip to the Black Hills in South Dakota, she was fascinated by the bison and herds of pronghorn she saw there. “Everywhere you’d look, you could see herds of pronghorn running over the land,” she says. “I was so impressed with their beauty.” It would take many years for art and the fascination with Western wildlife to combine and become a focus for Lundeen. But, here she is today—enthusiastically capturing in oils the animals that made such an impression on her when she was
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Peaceful, Spiritual Paintings

Peaceful, Spiritual Paintings

October 12, 2023 | by

In November, Jane Hunt expects to move into her “dream studio” in her family’s home outside of Boulder, Colorado. Building it has been a three-year process, and she’s more than excited to leave behind the small, temporary space she’s been using. It isn’t just the open floor plan and the additional space for new, larger easels that Hunt is anticipating. “The thing I’m most excited about is the view,” she says. “The studio is on the very top of my house, which is on the very top of a mountain so the view is just amazing. It’s a vista as
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Striking Gold

Striking Gold

October 12, 2023 | by

Harper Henry sees gold in everyday things, both figuratively and literally. Her stylized and visually rich depictions of animals and other Western subjects, some of them set against backdrops that incorporate materials such as gold leaf, represent the creative product of someone who is continually collecting and sifting through the things of day-to-day life, as she searches for a telltale glint of something precious. She’s always on the hunt for the proverbial flash in the pan—an expression that had its origin during the Gold Rush, a formative period in the very landscapes that inspire her art. “When an artist is
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‘I Have to Explore’

‘I Have to Explore’

October 12, 2023 | by

Wildlife sculptor Tim Cherry is constantly finding new ways to delight the eye. “I’ve kind of reinvented myself in the last three years,” says the artist, whose lyrical interpretations of animals have earned him many honors and a devoted following during his 35-year career. “The work I’m doing now is a little more contemporary, a little brighter in color than my past work, and I’m incorporating a natural sandstone from Colorado’s Front Range into my bases more often. I’m very excited about the results I’m getting.” A natural evolution of Cherry’s trademark style, this change was not born out of
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Creating A Legacy

Creating A Legacy

August 10, 2023 | by

Some people follow sports teams, some follow the stock market. Award-winning artist Mark McKenna follows a herd of wild horses that roams the McCullough Peaks not far from where he lives in Cody, Wyoming. “Just last week, I was able to get some great reference shots of this stallion named Sargent, who recently won over a group of horses from another stallion,” says McKenna, who describes Sargent as being mostly black with significant white markings, including a mane that shifts from black to white to black. “If you’ve ever been around a wild horse, they have so much character, especially
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