THEY VARY IN THEIR STYLES, from narrative realism to impressionistic impasto, yet the artists featured here are united in their efforts to paint what they know, especially as inspired by life in Montana. For Kenneth Yarus, often that involves trekking into the hinterlands for his...
OBSERVATION IS CRITICAL TO THE CREATIVE PRACTICE of artist, writer, and naturalist James Prosek. Observation, and what American biologist E.O. Wilson described as “biophilia,” the instinctive bond between humans and other living systems. As Prosek explains, it’s a fascination with life and its diversity, “a...
ANYONE WHO'S EVER STRUGGLED WITH RELATIONSHIPS would probably benefit from studying the dynamic between bronze sculptors and their patineurs. Because it’s a slow, complicated, and involved process, many artists prefer to turn that work over to other artisans so they can, instead, devote their time...
THROUGH HIS DEPICTION OF SIMPLIFIED LANDSCAPES, painter Travis Walker speaks to a problematic perspective of the modern West. By reducing the intricacies of peaks and crevices, solitary doorways and empty streets, Walker clears the way for a new kind of narrative — one which exchanges...
THEY'RE FAST, ELEGANT, SENSITIVE, AND STRONG, with wild manes and tails that touch the grass. At times they seem otherworldly, mythological, like the four-legged inhabitants of fairy tales. Yet here they stand, living among us, helping with the most practical of endeavors while offering emotional...
THE PROBLEM WITH INTERVIEWING JULIA GALLOWAY is that she’d rather talk about anything other than herself. Anything, that is, having to do with clay. “It’s kind of embarrassing,” she says. “I don’t really know much about anything else!” Whether entirely accurate or not, the statement encapsulates...
IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE AMBLING in the vicinity of Wyoming Blue Eyes, the painting by representational artist Carrie Ballantyne, prepare for a double take. The oil depicts a young woman whose wavy blond hair spills from a loose braid below a flat-topped, wide-brimmed hat....
David Quammen’s new book, The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life (Simon & Schuster, $30), explores the world of contemporary molecular biology and delves into the history of evolutionary theory, revealing how recent discoveries at the molecular level point toward a different and...
The home, a modest three-bedroom cabin with a small wooden deck and brick fireplace, was built in the middle of the last century in the style of the times, on the edge of an overgrown slope above Rock Creek along the road to Beartooth Pass...
Like most family photo albums, mine contains pictures of me as a child sitting next to roadkill. Now, before you dismiss this as just another small-boy-hangs-out-with-dead-animals-found-on-random-roadsides piece of nostalgia, let me boast about one particular photo, in which 4-year-old me, uncertainly holding a banana, is...