Thunderhead Riders by Mark Maggiori  24×30″  Oil

Mark Maggiori. Dramatic Western scenes. Each so stunningly captivating it’s hard to take your eyes off of these paintings. The light in the clouds in this painting is mind boggling. I love the light on the second horse and rider. Be sure to check Mark’s work out, you won’t believe what you see!

Read a bit about Mark, from his website:

“Mark Maggiori, b. 1977. Live in Los Angeles, California

Mark Maggiori’s first views of America were framed within the front windshield of a car making its way from New York to San Francisco. That month-long trip, filled with majestic views of the national parks and timeless glimpses of the West, was made when Mark was only 15 years old and on vacation far from his home in France, but its impact would ripple throughout his life and set into motion his great fascination with the West.

Years later, back in Paris, he would enroll at the famous Academie Julian, where Western greats Ernest L. Blumenschein, Burt Geer Phillips and Joseph Henry Sharp had also studied before they helped form the Taos Society of Artists. After being formally trained in academic drawing, Mark’s life would take an important detour through music after he formed a successful band that led to many opportunities in Europe, including into other artistic disciplines such as animation, photography and filmmaking—each one informing his artistic creativity in unique ways.

After great success in the music industry, Mark was lured back to the United States thanks to his muse, creative equal and wife Petecia Lefawnhawk. They journeyed through the West and their trips immediately took him back to that original road trip two decades earlier, the trip that opened his eyes to the beauty of American West. It was then, at the age of 36, he made the decision to paint Western art. They staked temporary claims in out-of-the-way places such as Chloride and Kingman, Arizona, where the desert offered its stunning inspiration and where Mark quickly began to produce some of the most audacious Western paintings of a new generation—audacious because Mark was still brand new to the Western art world, and also because he was an outsider, a Frenchman, with a profoundly unique view of the American cowboy. In the space of just a few short years Mark rose through the ranks to become one of the premier Western artists working today.

His work brought many new opportunities, including important solo and group shows, and a significant showing at the 2016Night of Artists at the Briscoe Western Art Museum, where he won the Patron’s Choice award. He also began to expand more artistically: he started to work more in plein air; he spent time on ranches, with cowboys and on horseback to acquaint himself more with the Western way of life; he painted for a month in Taos, New Mexico; and began adding additional figures to his works and new kinds of compositions to his growing arsenal.

Like Henry Farny, another Frenchman who made his way to the Southwest to paint its interesting inhabitants, Mark has carved a unique place for himself within Western art, a place where his work—part Frank Tenney Johnson, part Herbert “Buck” Dunton, with shades of Tom Ryan and Bill Owen—continues to provoke the minds of young and old Western collectors alike.” Continue reading HERE…

All images via MarkMaggiori.com, used with permission…

Images are not for reproduction, they are property of the artist.

Catch you back here tomorrow!

Boat for Sale with Motor by Carl Bretzke  11×14″  Oil

Carl Bretzke! Wow! I ran across his work via LPAPA Laguna Plein Air Painters Association (LPAPA), and was I ever thrilled! What wonderful paintings. I love how Carl doesn’t paint the entire canvas, he leaves bits showing through, that intrigues me, adds interest. His nocturnes (I am a fan!) are wonderful – too difficult to choose, so be sure to check out his website!

Stonington Overlook by Carl Bretzke 16×20″  Oil

Another fabulous painting – I love the vantage point. Beautiful light and shadows. Love the homes, the power lines, the water… oh! Everything about it… One thing about Carl’s paintings – he paints a wide variety of subjects. You have to see to believe!

Check out Carl’s 2017 Events as well as his paintings. You will love them!

Read a bit about Carl, from his website:

“Carl Bretzke is a representational oil painter who specializes in urban scenes and plein air landscapes. 

Carl’s work has been described in the Washington Post as “simultaneously intimate and detached…The artist’s unadorned style recalls Edward Hopper and The Ashcan school.”

Carl holds an MD degree from the University of Minnesota Medical School. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Colorado, where he also received a minor in Fine Art. Carl has also trained extensively under Plein Air Painters of America signature artist Joseph Paquet.”

All images via CarlBretzke.com, used with permission…

Images are not for reproduction, they are property of the artist.

Sunlit Trail Thru A Clear Winters Day by Micheal Zarowsky  

18×30″  Mixed Media Acrylic on Gessoed Birch Panel

Micheal Zarowsky, a talented artist from Canada. What a pleasure his paintings are. His snowy paintings make me smile. The incredible light and those beautiful shadows. I mean, just LOOK… I can hear the silence in the woods. Hear the occasional bit of snow drop from a branch up high. Micheal has mastered these paintings, as well as other subjects, but I will leave that to you to check out… don’t miss it!

Also, be sure to check out Micheal’s blog!

Read a bit about Micheal, from the Artist Statement on his website:

“SOME THOUGHTS ON MY LIFE AS AN ARTIST

Growing up has been but a series of preoccupations

I never had any lack of confidence in my ability to draw. As just another way to express myself, it started out as a way to occupy idle time. My first exhibition was of drawings at age eleven. I studied philosophy and psychology and found I was able to re-organize and develop my thinking which in turn opened up the parameters of my world even further.

My return, after university, if it is a return to painting, is a return to mystery in the sense that losing myself in the work takes me places as much as I take it. Not knowing any limits, while searching for a way to express myself through painting, I experimented and through trial and error, pushed back the boundaries of what could be done with the medium. Finding traditional watercolour methods which reduce everything to a series of washes confining of my need for continuous progression/growth, it dawned on me to reverse the process so that I invent new techniques to express what I see and feel is there, painting it the way we found it and it found us.

This is not to say there is anything wrong with traditional watercolours methods, rather more of a statement about my expectation of what a finished work looks and feels like and working my way – which is the only way I know how – I can express what I have to get out. It is an open ended process in so far that each new work presents new problems needing their own resolutions. Much like reinventing the wheel each time, we come to each idea not knowing exactly what and how we will work it through, which joyfully, is much like walking a tightrope. This gives me the edge I so desperately need; all focus is on losing myself in the process; by maintaining open-mindedness, willingness, and calmness, I in effect open myself up as a channel. Being able to let go comes through in the painting and is what gives it it’s intensity, liveliness, energy…..

The uniqueness and sensibility that the paintings have, evolves as the elements of the work are continuously rethought, adjusted, refined, worked reworked re invented/rediscovered anew, to continue to express what is a continuing, growing love I have for Wendy, and the ever changing relationships with growing adjustment not only to myself, to the world around me, to the ever everyone in our life. Any realism in the work has more to do with an attitude than with a style.

The emphasis is on the process of discovery – of creative interpretation of some aspect of the world – being coupled with a second process of inventive-ness – the personal expression of what is discovered.

Painting is a spiritual process connecting me to the world.

Wendy is an inextricably interwoven part of that process. Not only can she paint, she is integral to the process, in that we both go out and explore together, putting together our ideas, working them through together; assembling, discussing, pushing and pulling and reinforcing each other in envisioning what is before us into something we can express through paint to share with the world. The paintings are the realization of both of us.

We both have a similar eye, feel, understanding and love for nature and the natural, and the civilized places in-between all of which we lose ourselves in and paint. Again the energy in the work is an expression, a confirmation and reaffirmation of the love we have for each other.

Armed with this encouragement and our growing belief in ourselves, we continue to explore our backyard, having spent three separate Decembers wandering through Paris.

Our efforts in Ontario have allowed us to develop our ability to isolate what we feel is the essence of a subject, and to work out a new way to present that aspect of it which both expresses and represents the whole. For us the paintings express the most essential qualities of the experience portrayed

I find light irresistable.

My spirits soar on a sunny day.

I can sit by the water’s edge for days and not feel the need to move.

Heat and humidity allow me to lose my physical edges – subzero temperatures merely outline where I end and the rest of the world begins.

We paint light, atmosphere, the transparency of water. We think of the work as neo or contemporary impressionism.

We paint the heat and humidity, which support all those strong and crazy colours that make up the Tropics – the Caribbean…and winter, well snow is just water that”s froze. Winter is a blanket of white and blue contours of the countryside held seamlessly together

The joyful and continuous response to the paintings by others, not only gives us contemporality, but also lets us know we are not alone in how we feel about the world. In 1989 – it seems so long ago now – we escaped Ontario for the first time ever; our toes touching the eastern seaboard we fell hopelessly in love with the ocean. How uppermost simple – the blue of the sky and the blue of the water divided by a mere horizon line. We immediately sold our souls to the keeper of the seas in exchange for the promise to continue to be able to return. We’re easy. Every time we go back we find it has an ever expanding grip on us

In 1990 we crossed the big pond for the first time and bathed in the buttermilk skies of Paris in December. Sketching our way through the Dordogne we came back next summer to lose ourselves in the waterside life in Venice, exploring the sea and air and light as it continued to work its magic on the city over the centuries.

Continuing to explore Europe, we pursue our natural inclination for the hot tropics – developing our personal vision of the islands by exploring the relationships of heat and humidity to the strong colours found there

What began as an exploration of light and form in our own backyard some 30 years ago, has developed, for us into an ability to capture, share and express our experience / the essential feel of a place no matter where it is in the world”.

All images via Zarowsky.net, used with permission…

Images are not for reproduction, they are property of the artist.

Catch you back here tomorrow!

 Looking West by Teresa Elliott  40×30″  Oil  –  Available at RJD Gallery

Teresa Elliott. Wow. Her paintings will make your jaw drop. Seriously. She is well known for her longhorn paintings, and I’m not going to include one in this post so that you check them out. Seriously, I couldn’t have picked just one. She captures their inner spirit. Every. Single. Time!

Looking West is a fabulous painting, available at the RJD Gallery. This woman looks as if she’s going to take a breath any second. The light in this painting is incredible, the hair, the eyes, nose, mouth and HANDS! Whew! Talented.

Dog Day by Teresa Elliott  40×30″  Oil – Available at Gallery 1261

This was the first painting of Teresa’s that I spotted. She has a way with animals, no doubt. This dog looks like it’s doing some serious contemplation, ha ha… either that or watching the news, ha ha… Be sure to check out Teresa’s website – It’s a treat!

Read a bit about Teresa, from the RJD Gallery website:

“My own personal growth is inevitably linked with my progress with the infinite challenges of becoming an accomplished painter and providing a powerful visual statement through attention to color relationships, design, edges and paint handling.”

Native Texan Teresa Elliott lives and paints in the wide open spaces of the Big Bend in West Texas. Her years of experience as a commercial illustrator in Dallas naturally evolved into a career in painting. She completed a BFA from the University of Kansas and although self-taught, she admits to being influenced by many contemporary artists, as well as classical masters.

Elliott, who is also known for her portraits of cows, has recently expanded on her captivatingly realistic style to include several paintings set at Javelina Clays– a muddy oasis located inside a Texas National Park. These paintings include Deliverance (not shown) and Agua-Fria. Emma, Elliott’s daughter and frequent Muse, is depicted in both of these glowing and detailed works.

The visual arts has dominated Teresa Elliott’s life for as long as she can remember, and always will. She says, “I’m always pushing myself to grow as an artist, it’s the only way to stay fresh and passionate. My favorite painting is Rembrandt’s Self Portrait at the Age of 63. To me, this work is distilled down to the essentials of great painting. Having perfected his craft he created one of the most revealing portraits of all time.” Elliott further states, “My paintings reveal what I see visually on the surface and beyond the visible. I explore the fundamentals of the craft as well as the emotional content of my observations of the natural world.””

All images via Teresa-Elliott.com, used with permission…

Images are not for reproduction, they are property of the artist.

Catch you back here tomorrow!