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...
A first glance at any of Kevin Box’s collaborative sculptures almost invariably leads to a second, longer look in astonishment. How does a folded piece of Japanese origami paper manage to withstand the elements and remain perfectly still outdoors at a monumental scale as large...
On a recent summer afternoon, while Robert D. McFarland and his wife Robbie were riding their bikes during one of their frequent visits to the area where he grew up in northeastern Utah’s Cache Valley, a work of art suddenly demanded to be painted. “I...
When Leslie Duke was little, she loved her mother’s bedtime readings of Burt Dow, Deep-Water Man, a seafaring tale written and illustrated by Robert McCloskey, best known for Make Way for Ducklings and Blueberries for Sal. “Now I read it to my 4-year-old son Anders,”...