Nicholas Ward, 29, is a four year resident of Glenwood Springs, having grown up in Iowa and then moved out to go to school in Denver. Ever since, he’s stayed and now shares his art with western Colorado. 

“I paint figurative work, most of it is Western-themed,” Ward said. “There’s so much storytelling and exaggeration and myth associated with that time period, so I embody that in my work.”

As a child, Ward was often bored in the summertimes and his mother would tell him to go paint or draw something.

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“I was pulled towards it, regardless, but having that reinforcement, I think it developed my skills at a young age,” Ward said. 

A lot of these summertimes were spent in Colorado at Ward’s grandparents’ condo and he enjoyed them, viewing the stories of the West from the East. 

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“In some ways, you get these romantic visions of it, and I think that’s part of what makes the storytelling accompanied by the region so enthralling,” he said. “It definitely captured my imagination. I was into the stories as a kid.”

Stories about the west of America when it was just starting to become populated were harsh, like Doc Holliday living with tuberculosis and coming to Glenwood Springs in hopes that the hot springs would help his condition. 

The American west involved a lot of blood being spilled, awful sickness that hadn’t been cured yet and families living in an environment that was trying to kill them. 

Hollywood has romanticized these stories, where gunslinging, cowboy hat wearing, mustached men are the ideal, where Doc Holliday has become everyone’s Huckleberry, yet reports say that Holliday wanted very much to be left alone and that after all that, he was a dentist. 

Ward tries to capture this in his artwork, where one of his works that he’s most proud of is a darker scene.

“It’s a group of figures carrying another figure that’s wounded or sick and they’re set against a sort of void background to emphasize the figures,” Ward explained. The piece is called “The Sound of Death in Things” 

Ward focuses on oil painting as his main media at the moment, but in high school he was doing something quite different. 

“Creatively through high school, I spent more time woodworking, which I think has influenced how I paint,” he said. “In 2019, I heard someone describe oil painting as carving the paint and it was an epiphany in terms of bridging the two things I loved doing together.”

Ward says this has helped him create his own personal style and differentiate from other artists by merging the two disciplines together, much like how he’s merged the east and west together in his art. 

“Growing up in Iowa, it was an excellent place to do that, but there’s a reason I had to move back out here after school,” he said. 

It’s not easy being an artist and living out in western Colorado, he said, because a large chunk of what you paint is what is selling. 

“My favorite piece, ‘The Sound of Death in Things,’ hasn’t sold yet,” he said. “People do appreciate it and it’ll sell one day, but with how dark it is, it’s hard to have that hanging up on a wall somewhere.”

Some of Ward’s pieces try to capture that realistic side of the west and he tries to do so by recognizing the Hollywood version and leaning into it. 

“My figures are often distorted, so my style has become big figures with big hands and super tiny heads,” he said. “I think I use that to break through the Hollywoodized version of the West. I also like to have fun with it.”

Part of how Ward found his style was through a visit to Utah, particularly Moab, where he encountered magnificent rock pillars.

“There’s so many out there that I see human forms in and I took that idea and ran with it,” Ward said. “I think people can approach my paintings and see their own life story in it.”

While Ward doesn’t do as much woodworking now, mostly furniture pieces when he does, he has an idea for a future art show. 

“I’d like to make some carvings out of my figures and then have them set up in front of my paintings,” he said. “I hope to approach that when I feel more stable.”

Ward, like many people in Colorado, came for a visit and couldn’t leave, the mountains enrapturing him just like everyone who lives here. 

“The idea that the land can hold these stories that have happened and tell them back to us in time, that’s part of it,” he said.

Ward’s art can be found at nwardstudios.com/ where paintings are available to be sold. He’s also done a mural at Carbondale’s Gateway Public Art Project along Hwy 133, where photos can be viewed at carbondalearts.com/gateway-project/2024-muralists.