Archives for Landscape

It’s A Beautiful Life

It’s A Beautiful Life

March 2, 2020 | by

Shanna Kunz’s landscape paintings tend toward the complex and moody: winding rivers lit by an unseen sun, autumn foliage beneath overcast skies, dark forest-scapes emerging from banks of thick mist. But Kunz herself is pure sunlight, a self-described and unapologetic glass-half-full personality who loves every minute of her creative life and overflows with enthusiasm for the things she loves best: the artist’s life, relationships with family and friends, and the beauty of nature. “I’ve been painting for 26 years now, a long time,” Kunz says. “And I still put a brush in my hand and feel like it’s new. I
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Essential Elements

Essential Elements

November 14, 2019 | by

“I’m self-taught,” announces Kathryn Stats, painter of sun-washed desert landscapes and vivid still lifes, then quickly adds, “which didn’t mean I didn’t take any lessons; it means I didn’t graduate in anything!” Stats’ artistic journey was unconventional from the start. “I have a great uncle by marriage [LeConte Stewart], who was a fine, fine, well-thought-of artist,” she says. “I rode horses in the summer from morning until night in the same county he lived in. We had his paintings on our walls, and I tended to see landscapes through his eyes. I really think that had an influence.” Initially, that
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The Studio of Peggy Immel

The Studio of Peggy Immel

July 15, 2019 | by

For the past three years, Peggy Immel has been happily painting in a studio south of downtown Taos, New Mexico. Although she says it’s nothing fancy, it certainly meets the needs of the landscape painter, providing her with the space and privacy she needs to create the majestic scenes that have captivated here since she moved to the area 17 years ago. Although Immel spends much of her time painting en plein aire, her studio has everything she needs when she is putting the finishing touches to her work, framing her paintings, or taking care of other business needs that
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Spirit and Splendor

Spirit and Splendor

July 15, 2019 | by

A couple of Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes really speak to oil painter Ron Rencher. One of his favorites is this: “Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.” Rencher currently is in hot pursuit of the beautiful; he’s in the middle of a move to Taos, New Mexico, a place he once lived and still considers his artistic home. During a visit with him in early May, Rencher said he and his wife Carlene were in the thick of moving-related business: renting the U-Haul, closing on the
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Beautiful Moments

Beautiful Moments

July 14, 2019 | by

For nearly 20 years, Utah artist Nicholas Coleman has created realistic paintings, with impressionistic overtones, as he preserves the history of the American West. His Western history and art education began at his father’s side. “[My dad] was always buying me sketchbooks, or we’d go to the art store and get colored pencils or clay,” Coleman says. His father also bought him history books and told stories of cowboys, Native Americans, and mountain men to expand his son’s knowledge of the country’s heritage. As early as age 3, Coleman worked alongside his father, renowned artist Michael Coleman. The younger Coleman
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Passion and Paint

Passion and Paint

July 14, 2019 | by

Churches and cemeteries hold a special fascination—and offer a special inspiration—for Walt Gonske, so much so that he has traveled to several states and foreign countries to capture their beauty and, in essence, to tell their stories. That fascination took hold almost immediately, when Gonske moved from New York City to Taos, New Mexico, 47 years ago. Having spent the first 30 years of his life on the East Coast, he was so taken with New Mexico that, when he visited his sister there in 1971, he went home, saved his money for a year, and made a permanent move
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The Studio of Giuliana Aubert

The Studio of Giuliana Aubert

June 15, 2019 | by

Giuliana Aubert loves her new studio at her home in Manhattan Beach, California. It’s one of two; the other is at her home in Lake Como, in northern Italy, where she spends four months each year. Two studios? It’s what artists do, she says, adding, “We try to figure out how to have our working space where we live.” Initially, Aubert painted in a bedroom, then graduated to the dining room, and eventually to the great room—where people passing by on the street could watch her at work, which she hated. Later, she work in a public studio that, she
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Luminescent Landscapes

Luminescent Landscapes

June 15, 2019 | by

As a young mother looking to launch a professional art career in the late 1990s, D. Eleinne Basa did what most people would do: She sought advice from the Internet. “A lot of the advice on the web was the same: Join a local painting group,” she says. “So I looked for a group.” Basa, who was born and raised in the Philippines, had moved to New Jersey with her husband in 1994, so he could pursue a job opportunity. She had studied art since she was a child and always knew that someday she would become an artist. But,
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Mother Nature’s Majesty

Mother Nature’s Majesty

April 17, 2019 | by

California artist Nancy Davidson says she can describe what inspires her in just one word: light. “It can transform even the most mundane scene into something magical and evocative,” she says. “The potential for beauty is all around us; we just need to recognize it, when it appears.” A self-described nature lover, who is surrounded by the spectacular scenery of Southern California, Davidson says that, “beyond an appreciation of natural beauty, I try to convey a sense of timelessness and wonder. When I am at the beach, watching the waves roll in just as they have since time immemorial, I
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Mother Nature’s Majesty

Mother Nature’s Majesty

April 16, 2019 | by

Colorado artist Jean Perry made her initial entry into fine art with abstract “nonobjective art,” she says, “but there was always a part of me that felt I was missing something by not pursuing traditional art.” Her focus began to change while taking a weeklong workshop conducted by Mel Fillerup, and she went on to enroll in workshops and classes that focused on representational art. “Today it doesn’t matter whether I am standing on the side of a hill in Portugal or by a stream in Colorado, there is always a certain excitement about painting landscapes on location,” Perry says.
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