Biography
At 13, LJ McLoughlin discovered she could draw, due to the help of an intuitive school art teacher. After this unearthing, the driving force behind her artistic bent was her mother. She won her first art contest when she was 15, sold her first painting at age 16, and won an art scholarship when she was 18. During her 20’s she did sidewalk shows, hung in local galleries, banks, art fests and county shows. She joined 2 local art associations where she grew up and became active with them. She did numerous portrait commissions of clients’ relatives, children, dogs and horses, and entered outside art shows whenever she could.
In 1987 she made her S.W.A. signature award, (Society of Western Artists), received recognition in newspaper articles for shows she entered, hung in museum shows, collected a handful of ‘Best of Shows’, various ribbon placings, the Grumbacher Art Award and a few People’s Choice awards. She also attended several nationally juried classes for the Cowboy Artists of America, which, the most notable for her, was to study with Howard Terpning CAA, at the Cowboy Museum in Kerrville Texas in the late 1990’s. She still gleans whatever she can from current-all-time-great-artists, whose critiques help to hone her skills and keep her eye keen.
She grew up raising and training horses, and in 1993 married a renown horseman from Arizona, took her horses and moved to a ranch there, with endless western landscape views in every direction and that glorious sunlight that pervades the scenery. Most of her current work reflects the Arizona western life, that she knows and has grown to love. Along with her husband, she runs and operates a equine riding school in south-eastern Arizona, where she paints from her studio at their ranch, and enjoy teaching art when time permits. She continues to strive to give the world a glimpse of this beauty that we call the ‘west’.
Her vision is to present to viewers, paintings of Arizona and other places in the American ‘west’, by creating works using the backdrops of the west’s beautiful and gritty scenery. She will visit places of historical significance and composes her paintings; every rock and every nuance are actually there, if the viewer ever decides to visit the site. If not, they have a canvas of accurate western life placed on their walls, and a memory of those real, current or nostalgic western events captured in a moment in time. She also paints portraits of native Navajo and Apache peoples and other western characters, whose faces and lives, inspire and move us.
Recent Exhibitions
Phippen Western Art Museum in Prescott, AZ- to receive the Coleman Award of Excellence for the best depiction of ‘Ranch Life’ with her painting, The Catch.
Slopoke Western Art shows in Solvang, CA- awarded Best of Show
Mountain Oyster Club Art Show in Tucson, AZ
AWA Show at Steamboat Art Museum, Steamboat Springs, CO
American Academy of Equine Art in Aiken, SC
W.A.O.W. Juried show at the Woolaroc Museum and Wildlife Preserve in Oklahoma
Small Works- Great Wonders, Cowboy Museum and Heritage Center in Oklahoma City, OK
‘Cowgirl Up’ Show in Wickenburg Arizona, at the Desert Caballeros Western Museum, Awarded the Executive Director’s new artist award in March of 2021
‘Best of the West’ Art show, Great Falls, MT
Big Sky Art Auction, in Big Sky, MT
Solo Show in Wickenburg, Arizona with 20 works, 2023