If you want oil paintings of aspen trees or cityscapes, Sparky Lebold is not your guy. But if you want traditional, richly textured landscapes of the sea, open spaces, rundown buildings, figures and still-lifes of fruit and vegetables, LeBold is the artist of your dreams. One recent painting w as inspired by a visit to Quail Lake, where a small embankment inspired him, with its trees just beginning to turn in the fall. It might not have caught anyone else’s eye, but the small scene enthralled LeBold, who often paints en plein air. “I try to keep it honest work,” LeBold said. “I’m not the best, but I’m not the worst. I love landscapes because it’s open. I try to do landscapes like nobody’s there. I like the openness of the land and the verve and energy of the sea. I paint the things that hit me. Whether they hit someone else or not is of little concern.” Oil painter Sparky LeBold’s new work depicts Colorado landscapes and oceans around the world. Courtesy Cottonwood Center for the Arts “Sparky LeBold, A Retrospective” will feature 50 paintings beginning Friday at Cottonwood Center for the Arts. Courtesy Cottonwood Center for the Arts Artist Sparky LeBold founded what’s now Cottonwood Center for the Arts in the mid 1990s. Courtesy Cottonwood Center for the Arts “Sparky LeBold, A Retrospective” will open with a free reception Friday at Cottonwood Center for the Arts. It runs through Jan. 31. The exhibit will feature 50 plein air and studio paintings, including still lifes, Colorado landscapes, and seascapes of Portugal and California, two locations dear to him. He uses impasto to create his classical, dramatic paintings, a technique where paint is thickly applied to a surface, and brushstrokes or palette knife marks clearly stand out. LeBold has traveled the world for the last four decades and painted much of it, particularly the Mediterranean, and specifically Sesimbra, Portugal, where he’s lived on and off for years. “Eighty percent of my work is places I travel to,” he said. “Teaching workshops has given me the opportunity to hit 25 countries. I’ve plopped myself in certain countries with $100 and haven’t left for four months.” Lebold’s exhibit is also a full circle return, as he’s the founder of Cottonwood, which he started a few years after moving to Colorado Springs in the mid-1990s. After teaching for a few years at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, he decided it was time to run his own art school, which he and another artist and instructor dubbed Cottonwood Art Academy. Cottonwood took root for a short time on the upper floor above the downtown Warehouse Restaurant Gallery, before moving into a space above Paravicini’s restaurant in Old Colorado City in the late 1990s. “I look back on that time as it was a real, true Camelot of art renaissance in Colorado Springs,” LeBold said. “We were teaching classes, we had 350 students, and anybody who ended up being anybody, I taught painting and drawing to.” But during a workshop trip with art students to Spain, a spur-of-the-moment trip to Portugal found him in the village of Sesimbra. Mesmerized by the tiny fishing town that resembled his home landscape in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Calif., he decided to stay. He transferred Cottonwood to somebody else to keep it going, and eventually, the school relocated to its current location, and its name was changed. All these years later, Cottonwood is a thriving nonprofit arts organization that provides art classes, studios for artists, First Friday opening receptions and other events. “I don’t show any place in the Springs, so anytime Cottonwood does something for me, I’m thrilled to do it,” Lebold said. “It’s nice to come back to the place I started so many years ago.” IF YOU GO What: “Sparky LeBold, A Retrospective” When: Opening reception 5-8 p.m. Friday, through Jan. 31 Where: Cottonwood Center for the Arts, 427 E. Colorado Ave. Price: Free; 719-520-1899, cottonwoodcenterforthearts.com ...read more read less