About the Cover Artist: Chula Beauregard

Artist Chula Beauregard paints the picture featured on the Yampa Valley Arts &  Culture Guide cover, Summer Sojourn, at Fish Creek Falls. Courtesy of Chula Beauregard

Plein air studies are like seedlings to me,” Chula Beauregard muses. “Sown in the wild, out in person, and then they can take on any life that they need.” One such study is featured on the cover of this edition of the Yampa Valley Arts & Culture Guide. "Summer Sojourn" stems from a piece she painted in June 2022. From “the raw material,” as Chula calls it, she went on to create a commissioned painting of the iconic Fish Creek Falls.

A favorite subject of artists locally and beyond, Fish Creek Falls’ offerings are many.

“To me, what’s really intriguing about Fish Creek Falls is that it’s different every time of day and every day of the year,” Chula says. “In the fall, the water is trickling down like a necklace and in the summer, it’s rushing at you like a train. You just know that no matter what’s going on, it’s going to be interesting.”

In “Summer Sojourn,” Chula points out the subtlety of the color in the water, the shadows of purples and blues, the force of the water and the yellow ochre. “All of that was unique to that day,” she says.

Chula has been painting outside since she was a little girl, and her appreciation for plein air painting has been honed over the years. Working quickly as the light changes, she has learned to work with whatever conditions she has at any given time.  “There’s always light,” she says. “It’s just a matter of knowing how to work with what you’re looking at and make the best of it.”

Last summer, Chula won the President’s Award of Excellence at the Oil Painters of America National Exhibition, which was held at the Steamboat Art Museum, for her painting titled “Lift.”

Her work can be found locally at the R-Diamond Gallery as well as the Broadmoor Galleries in Colorado Springs and the Simpson-Gallagher Gallery in Cody, Wyoming.

To learn more about Chula’s work as well as upcoming workshops that she will be teaching,  visit her website www.chulabeauregard.com.