Beth Ann Loftin
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Beth Ann Loftin was born in the spring of 1961, in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, a small town located in the historically vast tallgrass prairie of the Osage Hills. She began showing a keen interest in drawing and painting as early as 4 yrs old. Best known for her figurative western oils and acrylic paintings, with nostalgic themes and bold use of color, she has also enjoyed considerable success in bronze sculpture, pencil drawings and pastels. Ms. Loftin’s work has been featured in many one-person and group shows in such fine galleries as the Edith Lambert Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Chaparral Fine Art in Bozeman, Montana, Legacy Fine Art of Scottsdale, AZ and Mountain Trail Galleries in Cody and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. At the early age of 16 she was given her first one-woman show at the Oklahoma Territorial Museum in historic Guthrie, Oklahoma.
In addition her work is in private, public and corporate collections in the
United States and abroad, including those at the Kameoka Historical Museum, Kyoto Japan, and the Latvian Artist Association in Riga, Latvia. Ms. Loftin is the recipient of numerous commissions, for private collections, and book and magazine illustrations. In 1999 she was chosen to be the featured artist for the Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival and poster artist. Ms. Loftin has been featured in articles in many prominent magazines including Southwest Art, Big Sky Journal, Western Art and Architecture, and Oklahoma Today. After receiving a full art scholarship from the University of Science and Art in Oklahoma in 1979, Ms. Loftin attended college until 1982 and has since worked exclusively as a visual artist.
Ms. Loftin currently maintains two studios. The northern studio is located 
outside of Big Timber, Montana, on a ranch surrounded by wilderness, prairie and mountains. While the southern location is nestled in a country setting outside of historical Perry, Oklahoma amongst the the rich heritage and secrets of the 1800’s land run that settled Indian Territory. When I began taking commissions and selling artwork around the age of 16, I was mostly interested in the human form and the style of realism. After years of success in portraiture and ever-increasing photorealism, I became disenchanted with what I was accomplishing. What I deeply needed was a
more ‘intuitive’ process in art to access my creative desire. I abandoned the ‘analytical’ formulated process of realism in color and form, and began interpreting with an intuitive response.
What emerged was ‘correct’ representational form with an emotional choice of color, often integrating symbolism and reaching deep into my intuitive ‘well’. I pulled together the passions of my life… United States history, namely ,the ‘great plains’ and the people that inhabit it, animals, especially horses, photography, intimacy of ‘relationship’ , and pre-industry
lifestyle. With my cherished old pre-1940’s photos that I had been collecting for years, I was able to get the perfect imagery that I could pull stories from. My archive of thousands of black and white photos, ranging from 1890-1960, are of the people that created this country, and how hard they worked and played, in a time when people were much more in tune with survival and seasons.
I continue finding these photos in many places, from archived historic collections to dusty corners of antique stores and garage sales, somehow discarded by a current generation more ‘tuned in’ to and reliant on technology. Since I grew up on horseback and learned at a young age
to break and train horses from old cowboys, I know the chaotic energy of a bucking horse and the amazing connection that happens when a horse becomes a trusted best friend. I learned from family and the ‘old timers’ how to plant and harvest, collect wild foods, drive tractors and drive
a team, tap springs, and so many more aspects of living off the land. These skills and knowledge are quickly getting lost, along with our treasured elders .
I feel a responsibility to all the people in my photos, to bring their stories to life and help share a rare vintage moment captured by camera, with the contemporary viewers of my paintings. I want to keep the folks I paint as 
close to authentic as possible to honor them, while at the same time adding my intuitive sense of color, to share my emotional response with the viewer, whether it be excitement, pride, solitude, fatigue or an ambiguous mix of all. These people I paint and sculpt, whether Native Americans, immigrants, or ‘born in the USA’ have a simple but profound story to tell, having lived the vast American experience, and ultimately created ‘us’ and
our culture…I want viewers to be aware of what we, as modern Americans, owe to them.
