Many of Sophy Brown’s recent works offer a deeply personal spin on the concept of the vanishing West. In Dueto Americano, for example, she realistically renders a Mexican-American cowboy on horseback in acrylics on a large-scale surface. Yet, all around the duo, abstract swirls, splashes,...
Plein air artist W. Truman Hosner does not hesitate when asked to explain why pastels are his medium of choice. “From the youngest age,” he says, “the one thing that always delighted me was color. And pastel is pure color. When you’re a painter working...
When Al Boswell came across his late father’s pocket watch a few years ago, he realized he had to create something special so its significance would not be lost. His dad, who had a “very small, very rocky dairy farm in southwest Missouri” where Al...
An apt metaphor for Michael Blessing’s career-defining moment of inspiration might best be described not as a light bulb going off, but rather as a neon tube suddenly glowing. It happened six years ago, following two years of continuously painting oils of classic Western neon...
Evelyn Gottschall Baker’s success is partly due to the sculptures of objects she creates that are so realistic, it’s hard to believe they’re works of art. The antler in The Shed and the coyote skull in Balance, for example, look like they are an actual sun-bleached...
Israel Holloway never dreamed of setting records when he began painting more than a decade ago. “I just enjoy being on the journey,” he says. Nevertheless, when the Museum of Northwest Colorado in his hometown of Craig, a former coal community some 40 miles west...
Bruce Cascia studies storm clouds up close and personal for the dramatically realistic scenes he paints of the vast prairie. “I am constantly going to Lake Michigan,” says the Chicago-based artist, “to photograph big thunderheads blowing through, just like I did when I was a...
Sabrina Stiles sees herself as a storyteller. Instead of words, however, she wields pastels to convey the narratives she discovers while observing the world not far from the vintage 1905 house where she lives and works in Longmont, Colorado, about 20 minutes northeast of Boulder. [caption...
Paul Schürch “paints” pictures and creates other artful objects using an unexpected medium: thin wood veneers, designed, hand-cut, and applied to sturdy wooden surfaces in realistic images of miraculously radiant beauty. To achieve such results, he draws on skills gained through a lifetime of diligent...
About 25 years ago, Debora Duran-Geiger began to explore making ceramic-mosaic folk art crosses set into wooden frames handcrafted by her husband Michael. With dedicated self-education and a creative drive that tapped into her seventh-generation Santa Fean heritage, those early efforts evolved into her career...