Some years ago, T Barny presented an exhibition of his abstract stone sculptures at LightHouse in San Francisco, an organization that promotes independence for the blind and visually impaired. As visitors ran their fingertips over the polished, sleekly curved geometric edges, smiles appeared on their...
Tracy and Sushe Felix met in art class in high school in 1974 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Now married for 37 years, they could well be known as “Mr. and Mrs. Western Landscape.” The Felixes have devoted their lives to painting, and they are represented...
The mesmerizingly detailed and realistic oil paintings by Karen Woods resonate with anyone who’s marveled at the beauty of the ordinary world when transformed by the blur and refractions of a rain-streaked car windshield. Such altered views have never had greater impact than in her...
Take one look at Ancient Origins, a recent work by Carrie Penley, and it’s clear that the artist resonates with the American West. An accurate yet expressively rendered image of a mighty bull bison displayed from the side in all his shaggy glory, the more...
In the early 80’s, when Greg Overton was a fourth-grader in Salt Lake City, Utah, a professional artist came to speak to his class. “We had a painting contest,” he recalls, “and I made a little watercolor portrait of Dull Knife, the Cheyenne chief.” It...
David Phelps sculpts mostly larger-than-life yet realistic bronzes of humans and animals that often seem to rise up from or sink below the surfaces on which they’re displayed. He traces such distinctive works back to his boyhood on the farm his grandfather first settled in...
Rebecca Haines resolutely resists the labels many people feel inclined to attach to an artist’s work. One glance at her dreamlike, colorful, and boldly delineated images of wild creatures, drawn in oil sticks on wood panels, gives a good sense of why. “I resist the...
One day last autumn, Jim Bortz was fly fishing on the Shoshone River near his home in Cody, Wyoming. “I got so wrapped up in it,” he recalls, “that I suddenly looked up, and there was a grizzly standing on the opposite bank. He started...
Judith Brunko conveys deeply felt connections to the Native American dancers and other traditionally clad figures she captures with spirited verisimilitude through oil paintings created in a style she describes as “contemporary impressionism, rendered accurately but painted loosely.” Her 2020 work The Protector, for example,...
Robin Cole enthusiastically declares herself “primarily an oil painter now,” but she quickly adds that all her work continues to be “very much informed by my original love affair with drawing.” Both elements come dynamically into play in recent works the artist describes as “vignettes...