Top Emerging Artist of 2009 | Clive Tyler

By Bonnie Gangelhoff

Colorado-based landscape painter Clive Tyler was a successful commercial artist in previous lifetime. But like many of his contemporaries, after a number of years in that business, he longed for a different way to express his artistic talent. In 1999, he took a leap of faith and devoted himself to a full-time career in fine art. It didn’t take long for him to succeed. By 2002 he had gallery representation and was well on his way to winning recognition and awards.

SPRING ON ASPEN, PASTEL, 22 X 28
SPRING ON ASPEN, PASTEL, 22 X 28

Today, Tyler’s paintings are known for capturing a sense of place, whether he is painting alongside a frozen stream in Rocky Mountain National Park or on a ranch in Missouri with cattle grazing in a field. Usually the scenes have one thing in common—calmness. “I really go for peaceful scenes,” Tyler says. “I want to give people a place they can stare at in the painting, like a meditation area.”
If he had to single out a favorite subject matter, it would be rivers, specifically the Roaring Fork River in western Colorado. “It has the vistas of the mountains with great pine and willow trees. And the light is phenomenal,” Tyler says. “The river runs north-south and the light crosses it at east-west angles.”

In a recent series of works, Tyler depicted the Colorado River headwaters in different seasons throughout an entire year. His mission was to document the trees for historical purposes as well as aesthetic ones. “I wanted to capture the colors of the green lodgepole pines. In two years, the lodgepole pines will almost all be dead,” he says, referring to the region’s increasingly devastating pine beetle infestation. “With these paintings, I feel like I have captured something important and historical,” he says.

He is represented by Elk Horn Fine Art Gallery, Winter Park, CO; Mary Williams Fine Arts, Boulder, CO; Meko’s Gallery & Framing, Fort Collins, CO; Adelante! Gallery, Oklahoma City, OK; www.clivetyler.com.

Upcoming Show
Elk Horn Fine Art Gallery, June 26-July 12.

Featured in “Top Artists to Watch in 2009” in January 2009