Bruce K. Lawes, Pair of Kings, oil, 20 x 30.
The almost tangible sense of reality that Bruce Lawes creates in PAIR OF KINGS, featuring two male lions in a dominance challenge, results from a process he has painstakingly refined over the years. “I build up layer over layer of oil paint to create a three-dimensional effect, also using many glazes to tint as well as shadow areas.” His goal, he says, is “to create a dramatic piece that will convey interest and wonderment, and sometimes spark conversation.”
A young Lawes began dreaming of portraying the world’s animals when his father brought home the first coffee table book by renowned Canadian naturalist and painter Robert Bateman. “As I looked through it,” he recalls, “I said to myself that I wanted to paint as well as him one day.” Lawes studied part-time at the Ontario College of Art & Design University in Toronto, “but left very quickly to pursue a professional career.” Some four decades later, his paintings appear in galleries, museums, and auctions alongside Bateman’s.
Lawes now works in an extensive home studio at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, complete with a 5-foot-wide hydraulic drafting table that he can position flat or vertically depending on a painting’s size. “But travel is a big part of a wildlife artist’s life,” he says. “I recently returned from a trip through the Tetons and Yellowstone, venturing 400 miles seeking out new subject matter.”
One of his greatest career thrills, however, remains meeting Dr. Jane Goodall, to whom he has pledged to raise $1 million through his paintings in support of her efforts to help protect great apes and their habitats.
Find Lawes’ work at Settlers West Galleries, Tucson, AZ; Trailside Galleries, Scottsdale, AZ; Broadmoor Galleries, Colorado Springs, CO; and www.bklawesart.com.
This story appeared in the December 2022/January 2023 issue of Southwest Art magazine.