One autumn afternoon in 2016, Karen Vance set out on a painting jaunt from her home in Winter Park Ranch, Colorado. Her destination was 40 minutes north in Rocky Mountain National Park: Bowen-Baker Gulch, where snowmelt-fed headwaters of the Colorado River flow beneath Baker Mountain....
Andrew Denman reimagines wildlife painting within a context of contemporary and modern art, dramatically shifting viewers’ perceptions. Take, for example, The Usual Suspects. The acrylic-on-cradled-board work presents 20 impeccably contoured ravens — some compositionally cropped along its edges — in four neat lineups against a...
Gordon McConnell breathes dynamic new life into the West of the imagination in acrylic paintings that “appropriate” imagery from classic films and transform them into boldly graphic celebrations of our great American mythology. His recent Django No Perdona … Viva Django, for example, takes its...
Prices heated up in recent auctions, where buyers showed equal enthusiasm for traditional Western art and contemporary works that explored the themes of landscape, history, and society in new ways. The art market has been buffeted in recent years by the same challenges people have sought...
Nate Fischer can identify two major influences that led him to open his interior design firm: his love for the ocean and art. Growing up in Monterey, he appreciated the “eclectic mix of coastal California design” found in his hometown, Big Sur, and Carmel-by-the-Sea. After completing his...
Art can take us to unfamiliar settings, remind us of our favorite places, heighten our imaginations, or challenge our worldviews. It’s a gift to have such an array of expressions to depict and describe the human condition — all within reach to learn from, wonder...
It’s not your average artist who creates a series of paintings that becomes popular, then refuses to sell even one. But Poteet Victory is not your average artist. Of Cherokee and Choctaw ancestry, Victory, named Robert Poteet at birth, was born in Idabel, Oklahoma. His name...
One morning in 1923, Swedish-American painter Gunnar Mauritz Widforss was having breakfast in Camp Curry at Yosemite National Park when Park Service Director Stephen Mather asked if he could join him. Mather was out of uniform, as was his custom, so he could solicit honest...
“People hire me for my imagination,” explains Craig Wickersham. The Scottsdale, Arizona-based architect designed his first home when he was only a teenager. His family lived in Santa Cruz, California, and his father was building a new house. The whole operation caught Wickersham’s attention, and he...
Hand-Carved Leather Doctor’s Bag by John Blair A second-generation saddle maker with more than 40 years of experience, Wyoming native John Blair applies his leather-carving skills to create bespoke decorative pieces, like this Doctor’s Bag. A real work of craftsmanship, this bag is no ordinary briefcase....