Studio Time
Three successful artists share inside looks at the workspaces that foster their creativity.
By Norman Kolpas
What’s the secret behind artistic success? Beyond natural-born talent, expert training and dedicated effort, putting together a studio that supports and sustains hard work and provides inspiration can help transform dreams into reality. As demonstrated by these three individuals who’ve welcomed Southwest Art into their personal creative spaces, an ideal studio is as singular as an artist’s work.
Western Dreamer
Andrew Bolam
Reno, Nevada
instagram.com/andrewbolamart
Two small sheets of paper—hanging on the wall behind Andrew Bolam’s easel in the studio adjoining his Sierra Nevada foothills home west of Reno, Nevada— offer insights into the creative approach behind his canvases of the American West. One, a color wheel, is “a handy reminder,” he says, “to avoid big, jarring splashes of complementary colors like red and green. I want my paintings to be more soothing and subtle.” The other features assorted abstract patterns to inspire compositions that “get viewers to think differently about what they’re looking at.” The results are paintings like SILVER MOON OVER STAR VALLEY, a muted tonalist landscape, or RASCALS, an unconventional woodland scene with two mischievous bear cubs and their mama. He says, “By using different approaches, I’m trying to impart different ideas or feelings to each painting.”
Such works continue to fulfill the dreams of an artist whose imagination was nurtured by “cowboy-and-Indian movies and documentaries about Western wildlife and national parks.” Born in England’s northernmost metropolis, Newcastle, Bolam moved to the western U.S. after completing graphic design studies at the Newcastle College of Art and Technology. He settled near Lake Tahoe before relocating with his partner, abstract painter Jessamyn Parker, slightly eastward to Nevada. Their studios share half of a four-car garage, with their respective spaces separated by portable partitions. Thick rubber gym mats “keep our hips and feet from aching on the concrete floor.” Though his surroundings may be “organized chaos,” as he cheerfully describes it, “I know where everything is at all times. I’m a seven-days-a-week painter, and this studio is designed so I can put my energy into the creative process.”
Bolam is represented by Mountain Trails Gallery in Jackson, Wyoming, Park City, Utah and Bozeman, Montana; The Sportman’s Gallery in Beaver Creek, Colorado; Dick Idol Gallery in Whitefish, Montana; and at Kneeland Gallery in Ketchum, Idaho.
Ready to Paint
Bolam says, “I have 20 years’ worth of sketchbooks, and a large custom cabinet filled with blank canvases ready to go. When I set up my color palette for a series, I custom-mix all the paints in one-pint plastic ice cream containers on a metal workman’s cart.”
Tools of the Trade
“For a long time, I painted with palette knives,” he says, “But I like to reinvent the wheel to get myself thinking harder. So, a few years ago, I started using flat foam brushes like you find in crafting or hardware stores.”
Studio Attire
“I probably have a hundred different Star Wars T-shirts. If I accidentally work in one and get paint on it, the shirt goes into my studio pile,” Bolam shares. “Same with the shorts I wear to the gym or for mountain biking. At the end of the day, I’m covered with paint.”
Easy Listening
“If I get inside my head too much while I’m working, I will not make a good painting,” the artist admits. “I distract the left side of my brain by listening to simple-to-follow books like spy novels, so subconsciously the right side can be making exactly the painting I want.”
Andrew Bolam, Silver Moon Over Star Valley, acrylic, 36 x 36.
Desert Idyll
Whitney Gardner
Wonder Valley, California
whitofthewest.com
It seems poetically apt that Whitney Gardner paints inside a vintage Airstream trailer. Just like the artist’s boldly hyperrealist oils, the studio-on-wheels’ gleaming aircraft-grade aluminum surface reflects the landforms and flora of the surrounding Mojave Desert, where she’s lived for the past 14 years. “This little community of Wonder Valley is perfectly named,” she says, “because it is full of wonder.” Views stretch north to the nearby mountains of the Cleghorn Lakes Wilderness, featured in her recent oil A PLACE CALLED HOME; west more than 50 miles to 11,503-foot-tall Mount San Gorgonio; and just south to the Pinto Mountains along the northeastern boundary of Joshua Tree National Park.
Parked “maybe 50 yards” from her home in a comfortably remodeled one-room “jackrabbit homestead” cabin originally built for a 1950s government land-claim settler, the refurbished trailer’s interior has been stripped of any original camping amenities. That leaves, one might say, a blank canvas for Gardner’s creative needs. She says, “The lighting is wonderful because it’s a small space surrounded by lots of tiny windows, and I have my easel set up under one of the skylights. I don’t really paint at night.” The BFA graduate of Oakland’s California College of the Arts, who professionally debuted with a sold-out solo show just five years ago, finds the compact space ideal for focusing her creative energy—and even venturing into larger formats. “I’d always worked in fairly intimate sizes,” she remarks. “But even though I have to crouch through the door and can reach up and touch the ceiling, since I’ve moved in, I’ve painted some of the largest works I’ve ever done.”
Gardner’s work can be found at Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, Arizona; and at McLarry Fine Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Work/Storage Space
“Since this space is so small, when I’m done with paintings, I just set them against a wall,” Gardner explains. “When I’m working on a show, I can easily see all the paintings for it, understand their color harmonies and cross-reference what worked.”
Some Don’t Like It Hot
She says, “There’s a mini cooling-heating unit attached to the wall, and it works most of the year. But this summer, it was about 118 degrees for five days straight, so I had to move my easel into the cabin for a week.”
Hydration Station
Gardner shares, “In the desert, it’s essential to stay hydrated. When I’m painting, I’ll keep a gallon bottle of water right near my feet, so when I roll back in my chair from the easel, I’m going to hit it and be reminded to take a drink.”
Music of the Canvas
“I love listening to music when I’m painting, but I’m really picky. Sometimes, I ask the painting, ‘What do you feel like today?’ I listen to folk music a lot—Bob Dylan, Barbara Dane, Townes Van Zandt—because I love storytelling,” Gardner says. “And, for whatever reason, when I’m painting flowers, I’ll play classic jazz like John Coltrane or Thelonious Monk.”
Whitney Gardner, A Place Called Home, oil on panel, 36 x 36.
Family Tradition
Adam Smith
Manhattan, Montana
adamsmithwildlifeart.com
This summer-into-fall has been a perfect time for Adam Smith to move his studio. It’s not far, mind you, going from a spare bedroom in the semirural house he shares with his wife, Ashton, and their two young children to a repurposed, 500-square-foot work-and-storage space with high ceilings that he’s built out in their garage. “It’s significantly bigger,” he notes, while laughing at the thought that bouncy chairs, strollers and other child-raising paraphernalia are still likely to find their way into his new studio. After all, his toddler son and 4-year-old daughter will no doubt spend time with their father as he paints, just as Smith did—and still does—alongside his dad, renowned wildlife painter Dan Smith, with whom he traveled to Alaska late this summer to photograph grizzly bears.
Such journeys, whether occasional father-and-son adventures far from home, or the frequent hour-and-a-half drives he makes to Yellowstone National Park, deeply and authentically inform Smith’s work as a widely respected wildlife artist himself. His up-close-and-personal acrylic on canvas paintings—whether the subject is a wolf stalking through the snow in ON A MISSION, bison bulls in battle or a mountain goat surveying its domain in Rocky Ridge—begin with thousands of his own on-site photographs. “I bring all those experiences back to my studio,” he says. Then, Smith eschews more sophisticated Photoshop techniques in favor of simple digital cutting and pasting of “bits and pieces” from multiple photos, followed by finished sketches of his compositions before transferring them to canvas. The results are scenes of arresting realism imbued with remarkable intimacy and mood.
Smith is represented by Astoria Fine Art in Jackson, Wyoming.
Near-Constant Companion
“Pretty much since I started painting full time around 2007, I’ve had a dog hanging out with me in the studio,” Smith says. “My new dog, who’s about a year and a half old, is a Boston terrier named Herman. His registered AKC name is Herman Munster.”
The Right Tools
“The main brush I use for putting down paint is a small No. 3 Scharff sable,” Smith says. “I’ll also use an airbrush to block out shapes and colors, smooth transitions and do glazes. Sometimes, I’ll use an old toothbrush to splatter rocks or backgrounds for a little more texture.”
Inspirations Recent and Prehistoric
“I like to keep things not too cluttered. I have only one piece of art hanging in my studio, one of my favorites of my dad’s, a print of a bull elephant charging off two lionesses,” he notes. “Other than that, I do have some animal skulls, an elk rack and some fossils—a megalodon tooth and a giant chunk of a dinosaur bone.”
Saving for the Future
Smith shares, “Before we had children, I used to play loud music. But when I first found out Ashton was pregnant, I started thinking about our future a bit more. Now I listen to podcasts from financial advisors.”
Adam Smith, On A Mission, acrylic, 13 x 8.
Norman Kolpas, a longtime contributor to Southwest Art, has written more than 40 nonfiction books and thousands of articles on art, architecture, design, travel and food. He teaches in The Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension, where he was recognized as an Outstanding Instructor in Creative Writing. Norman lives in Marin County, California, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge.
This story appeared in the October/November 2024 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Subscribe today to read every issue in its entirety.