 Based out of Sedona, AZ  

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.” ~John Muir

Lydia Gatzow is a contemporary impressionistic landscape oil painter inspired by wilderness and wildness. Born and raised on Lake Michigan in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, she was always drawn to making art and being in the great outdoors. In high school she backpacked in the Colorado Rockies one summer and spent another abroad in the south of France studying art at Oxbridge Academy . Lydia then moved to Pasadena, California, where the call of the desert first planted its seed. She graduated from Pratt Institute of Art & Design, Brooklyn, New York, in 2015 with a BFA in painting and minor in Art History and Ceramics. Many of her paintings are completed outdoors on site, drawing direct inspiration from nature; these plein air sessions inform her studio work. She sees her paintings as expressions of the beautiful and sacred energies that always surround us. She has a background in organic farming in Sweden and Vermont and is passionate about wilderness conservation, meditation, and yoga. Lydia arrived in Sedona in 2019, where she now lives and paints, after traveling across North America in her 1982 VW bus with her partner Charles, where she painted in over 12 National Parks, Forests, and Heritage Sites. Lydia is both inspired by the work of French and American Impressionists, as well as Abstract Expressionists. These traditional and modern sensibilities inform her unique style. Lydia is an associate member of Oil Painters of America and The American Impressionist Society and has won numerous awards for her work.

“My paintings are currently focused on the grandeur and the impermanence of the Southwestern landscape. I am fascinated by how wind and water have carved rocks, shaped canyons, and determined the fate of its inhabitants through its appearance or absence. Weather and Land collide in my paintings to create Heaven on Earth, and I am here to express this beauty through its many forms.”

Education

2015 BFA, Major in Painting, Minor in Art History & Ceramics, Pratt Institute of Art & Design, Brooklyn, NY

REPRESENTATION
Mountain Trails Galleries at Tlaquepaque, Sedona, Arizona

Legends of the West Fine Art Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico

RECOGNITION AND AWARDS

2025 September Plein Air Salon Top Finalist

2025 Honorable Mention, 6th Annual Prescott Plein Air Festival, Yavapai College Art Gallery, Prescott, AZ

2025 Oil Painters of America Associate Member

2024 Honorable Mention: “The Spirit of Prescott” Award, 5th Annual Prescott Plein Air Festival, Yavapai College Art Gallery, Prescott, AZ

2024 Oil Painters of America Associate Member

2023 Best Red Rocks, awarded by Tim Newton, publisher of Western Art & Architecture Magazine, 19th Annual Sedona Plein Air Festival, Sedona Arts Center, Sedona, AZ

2023 Honorable Mention, Main Street Quick Paint, 19th Annual Sedona Plein Air Festival, Sedona Arts Center, Sedona, AZ

2023 Honorable Mention, 4th Annual Prescott Plein Air Festival, Yavapai College Art Gallery, Prescott, AZ

2018 2nd Place Quick Paint competition, En Plein Air Painting Festival, Vermont Institute of Natural Science, Quechee, VT

2012-2015 Pratt Presidential Merit Scholarship, Pratt Institute of Art & Design, Brooklyn, NY

PRESS

2024, Featured Artist in “Woman Blazing New Trails, Collectors’ Focus,” Western Art Collector Magazine

2023 “Open Portfolio: Lydia Gatzow,” December Interview with Sedona Monthly Magazine, Sedona, AZ

2023 “Wyatt Gallery features Lydia Gatzow,” The Red Rock News, Sedona, AZ

2019 “Creativity, Intentional Living, & Slowing Down; An Interview with Artist Lydia Gatzow,” The Good Heart Life Blog, Worcester, VT

2018 “Rendering Nature,” The Vermont Standard, Quechee, VT

2018 “Artistic Impressions,” Summer campaign, World Of interiors magazine, conde naste publications, UK

SELECTED GROUP & JURIED EXHIBITIONS 

2025- Mountain Oyster Club Art Show, Tucson, Arizona

2025- Juried artist, Paint the Grand Traverse Plein Air festival, Crooked Tree Art Center, Traverse City, Michigan

2025- 34th Annual Oil Painters of America National Exhibition and Convention, Herring Center for the Arts, Bradenton, Florida

2025- Annual Salon Show, Juried Members Show: Arizona Plein Air Painters, The Scottsdale Artists School, Phoenix, AZ

2024- Arizona Around The Clock, Juried Members Show: Arizona Plein Air Painters Salon, The Mood Room, Phoenix, AZ

2024- 5th Annual Juried Prescott Plein Air Festival, Yavapai College Art Gallery, Prescott, AZ

2023- 19th Annual Juried Sedona Plein Air Festival, sedona Arts Center, Sedona , AZ

2023- 4th Annual Juried Prescott Plein Air Festival, Yavapai College Art Gallery, Prescott, AZ

2023- Juried Members Show, Sedona Arts Center, Sedona, AZ

2023- Arizona Plein Air Painters Salon, Scottsdale Artists’ School, AZ

2021- Scapes and Scope: Visions of the Land, Sea, and Urban Space, Huntington Beach Arts Center, Huntington Beach, CA

2019 Landscape; Urban and Rural, The Brick Lane Gallery, London, United Kingdom

2018 En Plein Air Painting Festival Exhibition, Vermont Institute of Natural Science, Quechee, VT

2018 Fresh Perspective, Vermont Emerging Artists Juried Show, Frog Hollow, Burlington, VT

2017 Dark Matter, The s.p.a.c.e. gallery, Burlington, VT

2016-2019 Show14-show32, The Front Gallery, Montpelier, VT

2015 Blind Spots: Thesis Painting Exhibition, East Hall Gallery,  Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY

2012 Speculative Alchemy, Live Artists Studio, Milwaukee, WI

2011 Further Painting Show, Heimbold Arts Center, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY