04 Jul Artist Spotlights: Kevin Courter

Kevin Courter’s landscape paintings of the greater San Francisco Bay Area where he grew up and raised a family — and of the mountains surrounding Redding, California, where he and his wife have lived for almost six years now — possess an enthralling, almost spiritual radiance.

His recent Down from the Heavens, for example, depicts a stand of ponderosa pines along the shore of Castle Lake in the Trinity Mountains, about an hour and a half north of his new home. As its title suggests, those mighty trees seem bathed in celestial light, an effect all the more enthralling for the moody backdrop of hundreds more evergreens covering the slope behind. Examine the canvas more closely, though, and the artist’s hand becomes ever more evident. “You can see my brushstrokes and that I don’t show every single detail,” Courter says. “One of my goals is to leave room for the viewer’s imagination to fill in the blanks.”

Down from the Heavens | Oil on Canvas | 36 x 18 inches | 2024

That wasn’t always Courter’s approach. Talented at capturing realistic likenesses of horses since childhood, almost right out of high school he was creating detailed wildlife and nature scenes in colored pencils or acrylics, going on to exhibit his work alongside such top artists as Carl Brenders and Robert Bateman. “When I say detailed, I mean almost photographic, like every hair on a wolf,” Courter says. Meanwhile, he also earned his income first working in a frame shop and then, for 10 years, doing creative product design and development for the many galleries of the then hugely popular painter Thomas Kinkade.

Finally, however, around the age of 30, he reached a point at which “I wanted my paintings to have more life.” He gave up his quick-drying acrylics “and all those detailed brushes” and, with the guidance of his former high school art teacher, took up plein air painting.

The change wasn’t easy starting out. “You have to be willing to make a lot of bad paintings at first,” he laughs. “But along the way, you learn from them.” Courter’s work has gone on to earn him membership in some of the top artists’ organizations in the nation, including the American Tonalist Society; and he has won awards at shows across California and the West.

Pico | Oil on Canvas | 16 x 10 inches | 2024

The artist continues to paint the landscapes he loves and knows so well, while also exploring new places in the Sierra Nevada and Cascades. Meanwhile, “when I need a little bit of a break,” he also revels in producing realist portraits of farm animals like cows, steers, sheep, goats, mules, and even the occasional chicken. “I decided I would paint them like a portrait of a person, trying to recognize their beauty and dignity. Since childhood, I’ve always had a deep love of and been drawn to God’s creation, and that feeling has never gone away.”

Courter is represented by Mockingbird Gallery in Bend, Oregon; Horizon Fine Art Gallery in Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Sekula’s Fine Art, Antiques & Design in Sacramento, California; and Perch Home & Lifestyle in Santa Ynez, California. His work will also appear in Shades of Gray III, the biennial exhibition of the American Tonalist Society, at Ballard’s Fine Art Gallery in Sheridan, Wyoming, September 5 to October 12.

Based in Marin County, California, Norman Kolpas is the author of more than 40 books and hundreds of articles. He also teaches nonfiction writing in The Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension.