Archives for Portrait

Embracing the Challenge

Embracing the Challenge

June 15, 2023 | by

Paul Van Ginkel will tell you he’s an all-in kind of guy. Every time he does something, he challenges himself to do it better than ever before. That kind of tenacity and ambition paid off in early March when Van Ginkel, who lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, learned that he’d been nominated for the prestigious Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award. The winner will be honored at a ceremony in September. Although he’s not a stranger to awards—there have been many—he was particularly pleased that his patrons were so insistent on nominating him to be recognized for his outstanding
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A Compelling Medium

A Compelling Medium

June 15, 2023 | by

With its mix of pigments and powders, pastel preceded all other mediums. The proof is on the walls of caves painted with mineral oxide pigments. Pastel is the only medium for painter and mountaineer Nori Thorne, a longtime collaborator with nature and paint. From the gritty, finger-staining application to its flexibility and even its fragility, pastel is the mode of choice for Thorne, who finds herself celebrated in a genre often associated with large-format oils or bold acrylics. “We’re really the red-headed step-children of the art world,” she says. “But pastel has been around since we were humans. That’s what’s
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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 Beauty of Batik

The Beauty of Batik

May 4, 2023 | by

Echo Ukrainetz starts each new batik piece with a black and white vintage photo, usually a portrait of a person with an expressive, interesting but not necessarily attractive, face. She sketches the photo, then traces her sketch onto high-grade cotton stretched on a frame and draws in the details of the face. Then Ukrainetz works, sometimes for more than a month, dying and waxing each section—the shirt, the pants, the boots, then the face, and finally the background—until her stretched cotton is as stiff as a piece of cardboard. She freezes it and breaks specific segments of wax before rubbing
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‘I’m Inspired by God’s Creation’

‘I’m Inspired by God’s Creation’

March 4, 2023 | by

“I have to paint my vision.” So says Frank Ordaz, whose visions range from portraits and landscapes to cowboys and old trucks. He is so eclectic in his subject matter and style that a gallery owner once told him, “I don’t know where to put you; I don’t know how to sell you.” That gallery owner needn’t have worried because his paintings sell themselves, appealing to a similarly eclectic group of collectors. Simply put, Ordaz’s paintings cannot be labeled—and neither can he. Although he was trained as a fine artist when he was a young boy, Ordaz spent his early
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The Studio of Mark Maggiori

The Studio of Mark Maggiori

March 3, 2023 | by

During the past two years, Mark Maggiori has found himself setting up his studio in two different garages. One is the studio of his dreams, located in Taos, New Mexico, and renovated to meet his exact specifications. The other is a more temporary arrangement, with his workspace nestled into a garage in Los Angeles, California. While both have been productive places for Maggiori to work on paintings for his upcoming one-man show at Legacy Gallery, it’s the Taos studio he wants to talk about. He, his wife Petecia, and his daughter Wilderness moved to Taos in 2020. They had found
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Inspiring and Uplifting

Inspiring and Uplifting

January 5, 2023 | by

Echoing the wisdom in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” “To thine own self be true,” Arizona-based painter Mitch Baird emphasizes, “As an artist, I don’t want to be pigeonholed. I simply want to be open and free to paint whatever I see—landscapes, figurative works, still life or whatever else motivates me.” He says, “Paintings are a communication between artist and viewer, and great artistic communication depends on solid draftsmanship, design, and vision. What I strive for in each painting is to create a positive visual statement, and hope that the viewer will experience what I see and be inspired, uplifted, and moved in
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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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Pushing the Color

Pushing the Color

November 3, 2022 | by

“I do a couple of shows a year,” says New Mexico-based oil painter Mejo Okon. “The rest of the time, I’m just trying to do cool stuff.” That statement is not a hollow boast. Okon has just wrapped up a courtroom sketching gig for a high-profile trial in Colorado and is now back home in Albuquerque painting. She recently dabbled in acting as well, playing a courtroom sketch artist in the upcoming “Coyote vs. Acme,” an animated/live action movie. “Today I’m working on colorizing some of my seventy-plus drawings from the trial,” Okon says, going on to offer some background
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The Studio of Joe Bohler

The Studio of Joe Bohler

November 3, 2022 | by

Having been raised on a 1,200-acre working ranch in northwestern Montana, it was not surprising that, as an adult, watercolorist Joseph Bohler would eventually make his home in a place with similar beauty and open spaces. Now living in Monument, Colorado, he and his wife Alaina try to visit his home state every year. “Every other year, I also head to South Dakota to do a little research,” he says. “There is a working ranch there that has a yearly event known as Artists’ Ride. They bring in all kinds of models–mountain men and Indians from various tribes. They can
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