Bruce K. Lawes | Inspired Realism - Southwest Art Magazine

From wildlife to horses to historical scenes, painter Bruce K. Lawes faithfully captures his subjects

By Norman Kolpas

Bruce K. Lawes, A Familiar Path, oil, 27 x 44.

This story was featured in the May 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art May 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

“IF YOU CAN ever get into the Coeur d’Alene Art Auction,” a friend of Bruce K. Lawes suggested to him about seven years ago, “that will be a turning point for your career.” The auction, held each July in Reno, NV, has a strong reputation among collectors of western art for consistently offering stellar works by both masters of the Old West and top contemporary western artists. So Lawes acted on his friend’s advice almost immediately: He composed an email to Peter Stremmel, one of the auction’s three business partners. “I’m working on a General Custer painting that I think would do well in your auction,” Lawes recalls writing, referring to a historical work he’d been planning on Custer’s early military success at the age of 23 in the Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, where his derring-do earned him the sobriquet “Boy General.”

: Bruce K. Lawes, Blue Jays, The New Roster, oil, 10 x 18.

: Bruce K. Lawes, Light the Way, oil, 13 x 20.

: Bruce K. Lawes, Custer, Before the Storm, oil, 60 x 40.

“An hour later,” Lawes continues, “I got a call from Stu Johnson,” another of the auction’s partners. “He said, ‘We got your email, and we really like your work. The Custer piece sounds like something we would like to have in our auction.’” And so, in the summer of 2014, CUSTER, BEFORE THE STORM—a 60-by-40-inch oil of Custer riding into battle against a background of billowing thunderheads—went on the block. When the hammer finally fell after spirited bidding, the painting had sold for an impressive $52,650. “That was the most that anything I’d painted up to that time had sold for,” says Lawes. “It was very exciting.” Just as thrilling was that Johnson, who owns the prestigious Settlers West Galleries in Tucson, AZ, “asked me if I would like to be represented by him. And then a domino effect happened,” the artist goes on, marveling at a continuing string of fortuitous events that has continued to the present day.

TRUTH BE told, however, Lawes is not someone to whom good things occur by happenstance. On the contrary, he stands as a prime example of the maxim that truly successful people far more often make their own luck. The 58-year-old artist has forged an admirable career as one of the top painters working today in the genres of wildlife, equine, historical, and figurative art through a singular combination of innate talent, meticulous research, and old-fashioned hard work.

Take that Custer painting, for example. Before putting brush to canvas, Lawes made absolutely certain that he had every small detail right. “It doesn’t matter if the painting is beautiful,” he says. “If it’s not accurate, it won’t be accepted by the historical community.” His success in achieving that goal, both in fact and in spirit, was summed up by award-winning Civil War historian J. David Petruzzi, who marveled at how the painting “shows the palpable, heart-racing moments prior to battle when boys become men and lives fortunate enough to continue are forever changed.”

: Bruce K. Lawes, Locked on, oil, 40 x 30.

: Bruce K. Lawes, Partners, oil, 18 x 13.

: Bruce K. Lawes, With Grace, oil, 40 x 50.

Lawes’ life as an artist had its beginnings in a boyhood love of drawing animals. “Since I was a child,” he says, “wildlife has been an innate passion.” The family home in Toronto was alive with pet dogs, hamsters, gerbils, and mice. His father “was a real birder,” taking young Bruce along with him, “and I was always doing bird sketches. I even sold my first drawing of one at the age of 12 to a family friend.” That talent also found recognition in school, where one year his teacher asked him to illustrate a class cookbook filled with parents’ recipes. “I probably did 10 or more drawings. I distinctly remember one of a roast turkey and another of chocolate-chip cookies.”

Although he knew he wanted to be an artist, Lawes admits to being “somewhat lost as to which way to go” after graduating from high school. He took figure drawing and painting classes at the Ontario College of Art, only to discover that “I was already better from being self-taught.” Word of mouth brought him commissions to do paintings; he supplemented his income through an assortment of jobs, including one as an airline passenger services agent, which enabled him to travel. More importantly, he opened a picture-framing studio, which provided him with insights into the qualities of artworks that sold; he also launched a printing company that enabled him to create high-quality digital images of his own and other artists’ works.

The greatest breakthrough, however, came through a workshop retreat he attended in Ontario’s North Bay taught by Robert Bateman. Lawes had deeply admired Bateman’s paintings since the age of 18, when his dad gave him a coffee-table book of the famed Canadian wildlife artist’s works. Through sheer good fortune, Lawes was one of four students assigned to share the cabin occupied by Bateman, who also asked him to monitor his sketchbook. “Each night when we retired to our cabin,” says Lawes, “Bateman would give us further demonstrations of techniques that I still use to this day, like using sponges to do a sky with a beautiful gradation of tones that looks like it’s airbrushed.”

: Bruce K. Lawes, A Family Affair, oil, 20 x 25.

: Bruce K. Lawes, All Tucked In, oil, 13 x 20.

: Bruce K. Lawes, A Loving Touch, oil, 16 x 20.

AS HIS SKILLS continued to grow along with his reputation, Lawes eventually was able to set aside the part-time jobs and devote himself to painting full time. Key to that transition has been an approach to his painting life that he still follows to this day, in which some of his subject matter is driven by “inspiration” and some by what he refers to as “circumstance.”

Much of the former, not surprisingly, derives from a passion he has had since childhood. “Wildlife always inspires me,” he says. “I could paint only wildlife and be happy.” Subjects abound for him very close to home in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, just across the border from New York, where he and his wife Luisa live in “a beautiful bungalow” backed by woodlands abounding in deer, turkeys, minks, skunks, raccoons, coyotes, and even the coyote-wolf hybrids called brush wolves.

Not all of his wildlife subjects, though, are found so close to home. A FAMILIAR PATH, for example, began with a reference image he purchased from photographer Michael North of a herd of elephants heading back in the evening from the salt marshes where they graze and drink to their resting place in the jungle at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. Lawes used Photoshop on the original photo to move the elephants around, arriving at a composition that pleased him. Then he sketched it by hand onto a canvas coated with a blue-gray base, blocked in the main colors, painted in the main subjects, and painstakingly completed the highly detailed painting over the course of some four weeks.

: Bruce K. Lawes, Eye on the Prize, oil, 14 x 21.

: Bruce K. Lawes, Lazin’ Around, oil, 16 x 24.

: Bruce K. Lawes, On the Hunt, oil, 20 x 30.

Still other paintings, Lawes notes, result from “circumstance,” by which he refers to works he conceives and makes happen through an entrepreneurial spirit; he notes, “I always look for projects where I can make a difference through education or by bringing attention to a cause.” Take, for example, his painting BROTHERS IN ARMS, depicting young soldiers in the Union cavalry charge at Gettysburg. With the help of his friend Robert Child, an Emmy-nominated filmmaker, Lawes pitched an idea to the committee organizing the observation of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 2013. The artist set up a booth right at the battlefield site and spent four days completing the large-format painting while 10,000 men and women reenacted the historic event before another 100,000 visitors. Before the paint had dried, the painting sold for $12,000; a commemorative poster featuring the painting sold 10,000 copies, with half of the proceeds benefitting the Gettysburg Reenactment Committee.

Perhaps the artist’s most satisfying recent work, however, has happily combined elements of both circumstance and inspiration. As Lawes, a longtime fan of wildlife documentaries, relates it, “One day a little over four years ago, I just said to myself that I should contact the Jane Goodall Institute and see if I can help them.” He sent a detailed proposal to the Virginia-based organization that promotes wildlife and environmental conservation worldwide, founded in 1977 by renowned English primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall, now 85 years old. His first painting for them, depicting two of the first chimpanzees Goodall studied in the jungles of Tanzania back in the 1960s, sold at a fundraising auction for $12,000, with every penny of the proceeds from that work and a limited-edition print based on it going to the institute. More originals and prints have followed regularly. To date, Lawes has raised about $100,000 for Goodall’s efforts, and has pledged to bring that total up to $250,000 by year’s end and to $1 million eventually. “I don’t expect anything in return,” he says. “Just the sheer honor of working with Jane is enough.”

representation
Settlers West Galleries, Tucson, AZ; Trailside Galleries, Jackson, WY; Westmount Gallery, Toronto, ON, Canada.