Image of the Day, March 20, 2012

Jay Moore (1964-) is a Colorado native who began his career, as so many fine artists have, as an illustrator. Moore credits his work with Clyde Aspevig at the Art Students League of Denver as a pivotal point in his decision to turn to fine art. Beyond actual form and color Jay has a wider and richer frame of reference. He responds to the magnitude and scale of the western landscape by depicting his subject in large-scale paintings—often using bodies of water to orient the viewer’s eye horizontally through the canvas.

Jay Moore, View Down Buffalo Valley, c. 2011, oil on canvas 60 x 80 in. Credit: Crested Butte Plein Air InvitationalLower Ugashik Lake, c. 2011, oil on canvas, 36 x 72 in. Credit: Jaymoorestudio.com

Image of the day, January 31, 2012

Artist’s Snowcase, by Bennett Owen

Remember the angels you left behind in the snow banks when you were a kid? Remember the tractor tire tracks you made with your snow boots on the way home from school? Well, Sonja Hinrichsen does too. And she never forgot. She just got better:

Credit: Sonjahinrichsen“It really came out of play,” she says. The inspiration was animal tracks left in otherwise unmarked and massive canvasses of snow laid out before her in high mountain meadows. She created her first designs in Colorado in 2009. Since then, she’s transformed winter landscapes in New Mexico, Lake Tahoe and in upstate New York.

A visual artist using many mediums, she admits to “liking places that are a little difficult.” The snow drawings are eerily reminiscent of crop circles that ‘UFO’s’ began leaving behind in British wheat fields during the 1980s. 

Credit: xahlee.orgMore down to earth, German-born Hinrichsen admits a passionate interest in Native American mythologies, handed down through the generations.

Credit: sonjahinrichsenShe enjoys the ephemeral quality of her creations. While some might remain for days, most are quickly erased by the next big snow dump. As an artist she seeks to create seductive imagery that “reaches beyond the mere beauty of art, and stimulates reflection.”

Credit: sonjahinrichsenHinrichsen plans her next outing on Saturday, February 5^th at Carpenter Ranch near Steam Boat Springs, Co. Volunteers are always welcome. No talent needed, the only requirement is a pair of snowshoes. The reward is hot coffee, camaraderie and that odd sense of satisfaction that comes from being part of something so big and wonderful, no matter how fleeting.

Round and round and round she snows …

Painting of the Day, January 5, 2012

By Donna Poulton

"I used to try to control everything but now I allow my intuition to speak more.  I try to stretch the truth of what the actual image is.  I never wind up with a real representation.  I do things that are recognizable, yes, but I have a much different intention." – Len Chmiel

Len Chmiel, An Afternoon to Enjoy, oil, 21 x 32 in. Credit: Len ChmielColorado artist Len Chmiel continues to attract the attention of the most important collectors and galleries in the west. Considered an artists’ artist, he is a master of color and design. In his painting, An Afternoon to Enjoy, the real and the ideal have been combined with sharp contrasts of light and darks to depict this layered winterscape.  This painting is currently on exhibition at the National Western Stock Show in Denver, Colorado.

Credit: lenchmiel.com. Hardcover, 200 pages, 150 color plates, $65.00 retail, Release date: December 2011, Distributed by University of New Mexico Press

Painting of the Day, October 20, 2011

by Donna Poulton

Contemporary Colorado artist Tracy Felix remarks “I use familiar mountain images and elevate them to iconic status. Many of my paintings I consider to be portraits of great symbols of the West.” Tracy is collected by the Anschutz Collection, Denver Public Library, Denver Art Museum, Kirkland Museum and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.

© Used with permission of Tracy Felix

Tracy Felix, Cubic Landscape, 2005, oil, 24 18 in.

© Used with permission of Tracy Felix

Tracy Felix, Along the Rio Grande, Oil on panel, 25 x 20 in.

Birger Sandzén: Ecstasy of Color

By Donna Poulton

Sothebys (on the cover of the most recent New York action catalog) and major museums across the west. A month ago his painting Summer in the Mountains was estimated to sell at between $300,000 and $400,000 at the Santa Fe Art Auction and it sold for $632,500.

Summer in the Mountains. Credit: AskArt

And he is now featured in a new documentary by Josh Hassel titled Sandzén: Ecstasy of Color which aired on the PBS channel in Denver on 2 October 2011.

Sandzén studied in Stockholm, Sweden under Anders Zorn, and in Paris in the Atelier of Edmond-Francois Aman-Jean, who was closely associated with George Seurat.  In 1894 he emigrated to Lindsborg, Kansas to teach art at Bethany College, where he stayed for the remainder of his life. 

In Black Canyon. Credit: PSMuseum.org

By the mid 1920s, his reputation as an artist and as an exceptional teacher was growing and Sandzén was often asked to teach summer school classes in other states such as Colorado, New Mexico, Michigan and Utah.

Colorado Cedars, Manitou, Colorado. Credit: Birger Sandzén Gallery

He wrote “All color in nature is stronger than anything one can possibly have on the palette.  For instance, the shine of the moon-beam or the vividness of the newly opened flower.  There can be no danger of exaggerating nature’s color.” His painting Moonrise in the Canyon, Moab, Utah, reveals the moon rising over the Colorado River with tall spires on either side of the river.  He used short brush strokes for the sky and longer strokes for the rocks and water and analogous colors of red and blue for his palette. 

Moonrise in the Canyon, Moab, Utah. Credit: Donna Poulton and Vern Swanson Painters of Utah’s Canyons and Deserts

Whenever Sandzén was asked questions about his work, his answers were always those of a thoughtful and supportive teacher.  Of an artist’s work, he once wrote:

 … that one should be guided in both composition and use of color by the character of the landscape.  There are western motifs out here, especially in a certain light (for example, in gray weather), which are distinguished by their majestic lines as in protruding rocks, rolling prairie and winding ravines.  One should, when painting such motifs, first of all emphasize the rhythm and then sum up the color impression in a few large strokes…the color arrangement, however simple it may be, should support and enforce the lines.  A false arrangement of color may completely destroy the rhythm.  In the atmosphere in which the intensive light vibration and ring of color produce the great power of light, which is often the situation in the dry air of the Southwest—it is clear that a color technique should be used that emphasizes the most characteristic feature of the landscape.  One must then use pure colors which refract each other, but which through distance assimilate for the eye-the so-called “optical” blending—since the usual blending on the palette, the “pigmented blending” is not intensive enough and does not “vibrate.”

Heart Of The Rocky Mountains - Rocky Mountain National Park. Credit: AskArt

In the painting, Hour of Splendor, Bryce Canyon, Utah Sandzén used blue to evoke depth and tones of red and analogous colors to bring the spires forward.  His loaded brush was used to sculpt the surreal landscape of Bryce Canyon. Remembering the desert, Sandzén once wrote “The great romantic wonderland of the Southwest with its rugged primitive grandeur, its scintillating light, its picturesque people.  What a world of beauty waiting for interpretation in story, verse, color and line.”

Hour of Splendor, Bryce Canyon, Utah. Credit: Donna Poulton and Vern Swanson Painters of Utah’s Canyons and Deserts