Monuments - Sage Creek Gallery

Born in Hamilton, Montana, and now living in Washington state, Lamb studied at the Art Center College of Design of Los Angeles and has 15 years experience as a professional freelance illustrator. The Smithsonian Institution, the National Football League, the U.S. Postal Service, as well as numerous leading movie studios and national corporations have commissioned his work.

Lamb was chosen Artist of the Year in 1991 for the nationally recognized southeastern Wildlife Exposition in Charleston, South Carolina. His work was also selected for the National Birds in Art Show that traveled to Japan and can be seen in North Light’s book, “The Best of Wildlife Art”. Jim’s work is part of the permanent collections of the National Football League, the Smithsonian Institution, the Pentagon, the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Museum and the Montana Historical Society. Recently, the USA Postal Service included Jim’s work in a show at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts displaying the best of 40 years of US stamp designs and the show traveled to several other museum venues in the U.S. Jim is a member of the prestigious Northwest Rendezvous Group of artists that holds its annual show in August in Helena, MT and the California Art Club. His work was featured in the February 2001 issue of Southwest Art magazine and the January/February 2008 issue of Art of the West. He has also exhibited his work at the historic Laguna Art Museum for it’s annual Invitational Plein Air Painting Competition for the past 9 years. His landscapes hang in collections around the United States.

Artist Statement

Over the past several years I have been developing my own personal artistic expression in oils of the love I have for the landscape. These paintings are small works, done outdoors on location-Plein Air (French for “in the open air”). They are much freer and looser in style than the works I created in my earlier years as a free-lance illustrator. Painting outdoors has brought a freshness and vitality to my painting. My use of color and design have improved and these paintings are probably the most honest and satisfying work I have created as an artist. In my landscape work, I do not want to paint every leaf or blade of grass. . . to copy nature verbatim. I’m not trying to wow the public with my technical ability. My goal is to create a mood or a feeling; to capture the essence of the landscape or light effect in front of me and somehow, as quickly and efficiently as I can, convey my impression and feeling about it through oil paint to the viewer. I want those viewers to feel the moment, to recall a time or place in their own experience when they were there too. I want to convey the beauty, magnificence and vastness of it all. If I can accomplish these goals, it gives me great pleasure, and I feel that I have been successful in my expression of what initially inspired me.