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...
Terri Ford was attending an opening reception in January 2016 for the California Art Club at its gallery in San Marino’s 200-year-old El Molino Viejo, a historic grist mill originally built to serve San Gabriel Mission. In the late afternoon light, she spied a scene...
Brad Overton rs asked in early 2008 as if it were yesterday. “Are you sculpting, or are you wasting your talent?” That challenge came from Angelo Caravaglia, his former sculpture professor from the University of Utah, where Overton had graduated with a Bachelor of Fine...
Stephanie Hartshorn paints portraits of the built West: weathered barns, ranch houses, and grain silos; vintage tractors and railroad cars; and sun-bleached neon signs advertising small-town spots where hardworking people gather. “I feel more of a connection, a pull to them than I do to...
When Terri Loewenthal creates one of her photographic artworks, a bystander might wonder what on earth is happening — that is, should the rarest of chances lead an intrepid hiker to the ultra-remote locations she selects. On her Mamiya 645, a medium-format professional-quality camera that...
Dan Knepper lives contentedly amidst the gentle farmlands of western Ohio, in a town where, he wryly boasts, “we now have two stoplights.” But again and again, he revisits the tranquil grandeur of the Rocky Mountain West. “I find myself wanting to paint those big,...
Mike Wise vividly remembers his 9-year-old self being mesmerized by the half-hour PBS series “The Joy of Painting,” which debuted in early 1983. “I watched Bob Ross pretty regularly,” he says of the cult-favorite show’s cheerfully reassuring, bearded, and permed creator and host. “I loved...
David Kammerzell brings images of the Old West to vibrant new life by combining carefully researched photos, diligently studied classic illustration styles, and his own contemporary sensibilities. “The West has always been a romanticized place,” says the Denver, Colorado-based artist. “I want to idealize or...