Nelson Boren

Working from a studio in Sandpoint, Idaho, Nelson Boren creates highly realistic, textured western figure paintings. To achieve this effect, he uses wire bristle brushes, razor blades, a carpet layer’s tool, and other implements he has devised to make texture.

He poses subjects from nearby farms and ranches, photographs them, and paints in watercolor from the photographs, wetting the paper and allowing wrinkles to catch paint in the depressions.

Born in Arizona, he was a cum laude graduate in Architecture in 1978 from Arizona State University, and then had a career as an award winning architect in Mesa, Arizona. In 1990, he became a full time fine artist and moved to Idaho.