Synthetic Resin Animal Paintings

Artist Comments
"This is a calf from a herd I met in Pagosa Springs, Colorado," shares artist Heather Foster. "I wanted the bold underpainting to show through and give a dist...

Artist Comments
Artist Heather Foster paints a pair of horses along a road that leads to the Galisteo Dam in New Mexico. "The light was amazing at that time of day," recalls Heather. She combines hues that accentuate the cool shadows and warm colors that were quickly fading with the sun. Masterful plays of shadow and light rule this outback acrylic piece.

About the Artist
Artist Heather Foster captures an enduring image of the West. She paints the dramatic landscapes and stalwart animals she encounters on her adventures to ranches and rodeos. Heather says she has always known she wanted to be an artist. As a child, she spent her weekends and summers riding the bus into Philadelphia to attend art classes at Philadelphia College of Art, Moore College of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Over the years, she's moved around the country quite a bit and done many jobs - everything from driving a pedicab (a giant tricycle that transports passengers) to art restoration and conservation (for one project, she unstretched and then restretched a $17 million painting that would not fit through the door of the buyer's house). The one constant though, no matter where she lived or what side jobs she held, she always made space and time to paint. Today, she works from a home studio in Santa Fe...

Artist Comments
"This girl was posing for me on a trip to visit a ranch in Pagosa Springs, Colorado," shares artist Heather Foster. "She looked, to me, as if she was wearing black knee socks...

Artist Comments
Artist Johansen Newman illustrates a nude portrait of a woman in the deep woods. She uses her unique combination of colors, patterns, and details, presenting a tattooed woman with flowing hair basking in the brilliant sunset light, surrounded by pygmy owls. Johansen draws fascination from the majesty of birds of prey and how they enhance the beauty of the human body. "The peacefulness of the ethereal moment is interrupted by the piercing eyes of the woman and her feathered friends," shares Johansen.

About the Artist
Artist Johansen Newman captures various characters through charming scenes that often weave nostalgia. A reflection of her fondness for edge and funk prevails in her dynamic portrayal of humans with animals and objects of their affection. As a toddler, her mother gave her crayons and allowed her to draw on the walls of her room. She pursued a degree in painting and printmaking, then furthered her education by studying with Bil Baird at his puppet theater in New York, ultimately forming her puppet troupe. Years of crafting puppets, designing scenery, writing stories, and performing shows developed her arsenal of skills—going on to be an award-winning fiber artist exhibiting throughout North America. She integrates these learnings into her current art practice. "My paintings capture fragments of a tale in a time and place that was, is, or has the promise to become," says Johansen. She works at her studio and display gallery at Gorse Mill Studios, a 19th Century textile mill building in Needham, MA. Her woodworking shop doubles as her home studio, where she constantly evolves her compositions to satisfy her aesthetic. Johansen's work has been featured on the cover of local publications, in pictorial essays, and toured museums across the United States. She was a professional and published illustrator for more than 35 years, including two dozen children's books, three of which she also wrote. Besides creating art, she finds herself an enthusiast of vintage collectibles, jukeboxes, signages, tin toys, neon lights, cookie jars, carnival chalkware...

Artist Comments
Artist Candice Eisenfeld shares the myth of The Dancing Birds and the Flood, "A young shepherd in China interpreted the dances of birds in the sky. He warned the elders in his region about a looming flood, but no-one believed him. Taking matters into his own hands, he made 1000 cranes from paper, working for weeks with little sleep with the wish to keep his townspeople safe. When the floods came, his town was spared heavy destruction while nearby villages were swept away. The young shepherd was later called Yu the Great."

About the Artist
As an American exploring issues of identity, artist Candice Eisenfeld paints through the lens of the first American art...

Artist Comments
"This playful reptile rests amongst native flowers and insects," says artist Jessica JH Roller. A happy crocodile comfortably relaxes against a pastel pink ba...

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Artist Johansen Newman paints a portrait of two men with their shaggy-haired dog and two cats. A diverse array of potted plants...

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Artist Emil Morhardt depicts an Elegant Tern and a Forster’s Tern hanging together in the winter shallows of the Santa Barbara beach in California. Their evening reflections ripple above the water highlighted in gold, silver, and copper leaf. "While the Elegant Terns show up in huge flocks, the much smaller Forester’s tern is uncommon in Santa Barbara, and so a treat to see."

About the Artist
Emil Morhardt is an acrylic painter from Santa Barbara, California who expresses his passion for birds through realistic acrylic paintings. He paints at home in a studio room that has large windows and a north-facing view of the mountains. He observes the animals from this window, watching roadrunners, foxes, bobcats, deer, and coyote run by. Surrounded by this wildlife, Emil paints bird portraits reminiscent of those by artist John James Audubon. He bases his paintings off hundreds of photographs he takes of birds in the wild and at wildlife recovery centers. Emil captures the freedom and inquisitiveness that birds display in the natural world. Before painting birds, he painted landscapes of San Francisco and the Eastern Sierra. Emil was raised in the high desert of California and learned to paint from his father, who was one of the early California watercolorists...

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Vibrant butterflies gather around and fly amongst dandelion fluffs floating in the air. Part of artist Natasha Tayles' whimsical series on butterflies. In col...

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"I'm a tough guy, don't mess with me," narrates artist Heather Foster on how she imagines the horse's thoughts. She paints the robust stallion in her alluring...

Artist Comments
"These raucous birds arrive at my Santa Barbara feeder in flocks," shares artist Emil Morhardt. "They shoo away sparrows and hous...

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Artist Heather Foster paints an impressionist portrait of a brown horse. She takes inspiration from a colt she witnessed at Bishop's Lodge, a small complex on the outskirts of Santa Fe...

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Artist Emil Morhardt photographed this goose from a small boat on the Multnomah Channel in Portland, Oregon. "It was serenely paddling along just a few feet a...

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"The Galapágos hawk (Buteo galapagoensis) is the same genus and size as the North American Red-tailed Hawk, but a little darker," explains artist Emil Morhard...

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Artist Heather Foster encountered this inquisitive subject while painting en plein air. "This nosy California girl wanted to be front and center to see what t...

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In swift calligraphic strokes, artist Shao Yuan Zhang paints a jockey riding an energetic stallion thundering through the racetrack. He explores and illustrat...

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Artist John Jaster paints an impressionistic painting of two White Mandarin ducks. He displays them with their reflections swirling in the water. With intrica...

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"These two long-billed curlews are gazing at us with an unmistakable curiosity," says artist Emil Morhardt. "Like many shorebirds, when I sat on the beach qui...

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Emil Morhardt photographed this tern from the National Geographic Orion cruise ship off Tahiti in May 2019. These birds, he says, are large, beautiful, extrem...

Artist Comments
I wanted to paint a pair of snakes that are intertwined like a puzzle. It is difficult to tell where one ends and one begins.

About the Artist
Kira Yustak paints fantastical scenes that come from her childhood memories, dreams, and the natural world. Each piece feels like part of a larger narrative of an alternative reality, rendered in a style she describes as comic realism. She feels art must trigger something inside the viewer’s soul.Kira currently lives in New Jersey and finds inspiration in the work of Lowbrow, Folk, and Surrealist artists.

Green Snakes...

Artist Comments
A bold impressionistic painting of a Mandarin duck gliding across a pond with its swirling reflections rippling in the water by artist John Jaster...

Artist Comments
Long-Billed Curlews, some of the largest of the shorebirds, often hang out together, milling around at the edge of the surf, then wading in to feed. I spotted...

Artist Comments
"These monarch butterflies gather together to have some fun and fly around," describes artist Natasha Tayles. She captured a ...

Artist Comments
"Who knew that Snowy Egrets at the beach hunted beetles?" says artist Emil Morhardt. "This one was stealthily sneaking up on some...

Artist Comments
Willets are usually at the edge of the surf, poking into the wet sand as they follow each wave in and out. This one, when I came on him, was standing above th...

Artist Comments
"This is a loosely painted scene based on a visit to a ranch in Stanley, New Mexico," shares artist Heather Foster. "I think they thought I was going to feed them. Sometimes a group of cattle will see me and run away like they imagine I'm thinking about burgers. But this group was curious and started towards me, with the ones in the distance moving at a quick pace, worried that they might miss out on something. Then we just paused & looked at each other for a bit." Heather captured the moment with her painting vividly portraying the scene. The cattle stand with inquisitive gazes before her. A bright underpainting shows through exemplifying the heat of the day and the amusing instance.

About the Artist
Artist Heather Foster captures an enduring image of the West. She paints the dramatic landscapes and stalwart animals she encounters on her adventures to ranches and rodeos. Heather says she has always known she wanted to be an artist. As a child, she spent her weekends and summers riding the bus into Philadelphia to attend art classes at Philadelphia College of Art, Moore College of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Over the years, she's moved around the country quite a bit and done many jobs - everything from driving a pedicab (a giant tricycle that transports passengers) to art restoration and conservation (for one project, she unstretched and then restretched a $17 million painting that would not fit through the door of the buyer's house). The one constant though, no matter where she lived or what side jobs she held, she always made space and time to paint. Today, she works from a home studio in Santa Fe, painting from thousands of reference photographs she shoots on her travels. Her artwork has been featured in the magazines Southwest Art, American Art Collector, and Western Art Collector, and published in the books Art Journey New Mexico and The Book of the Horse.

Words that describe this painting: ranch, cattle, cow, herd, animal, western, country, countryside, panoramic, New Mexico, impressionism, animals, landscape, western, acrylic painting, purple

Gathering on the Plains...