Reen Axtell

Featured in Southwest Art magazine, Free Rein brings together works by six longtime gallery artists — Heather Foster, Terry Gardner, Donna Howell-Sickles, Amy Lay, Amy Laugesen and Joel Ostlind — alongside new talent Maura Allen. Each artist explores themes of freedom, responsibility, rugged terrain, and the lived experience of ranch life through painting, sculpture, mixed media, and printmaking.  The exhibition’s title reflects […]

By Bonnie Gangelhoff Brett Scheifflee is a nationally recognized landscape painter whose oil paintings explore atmosphere, memory, and the emotional resonance of place. His approach to landscape painting balances technical precision with emotional interpretation. He often works from reference material and memory, carefully constructing compositions that convey both realism and a sense of lived experience. […]

Printmaker Joel Ostlind’s work revitalizes a historic landmark in his hometown of Sheridan, Wyoming Written by Todd Wilkinson in the December/January 2026 edition of Western Art & Architecture Wyoming native Joel Ostlind is a self-taught artist who spent much of his life herding cattle on horses throughout the American West. He holds degrees in Soil Science and […]

Linda Lillegraven lives in Laramie, Wyoming, and earned a BA in Art and BS in Zoology from San Diego State University. The great open landscapes of the West, with their changing light and seasons, offer the artist a lifetime of inspiration. Her oil paintings depict the transitions of color and tone of the plains, so subtle as […]

Sana Fe based mixed media artist Michael Kessler creates abstract, often large-scale layered panels that depict effects of time exacted upon the landscape. The artist explores questions of how and why nature looks the way it does. Sensitized to the natural processes responsible for the appearance of nature, such as erosion from water, scars upon Aspen […]

After 53 years as a professional fine artist, Len Chmiel hopes he can paint until he can't hold a brush. Curiosity is a constant companion for the 82 year old, which allows him to see every landscape as if for the first time. Living atop a mesa in Western Colorado on 18 acres, he says, "Looking out my kitchen window, I see a range of mountains -- that scene feels new to me every day. And it never gets boring, never gets boring! It's a wonderful feeling [...]