Spencer Holloway

Spencer Holloway is a Boise, Idaho painter who spent years as a wildland firefighter before turning to the brush full time. Those seasons on the fire line taught him to read a landscape fast: how haze settles into a valley at dusk, how a ridge loses its detail and goes flat and blue, how the cottonwoods along a river hold the last light longer than anything around them. He later earned a BA in Studio Art from Boise State University, but much of what he paints still comes from that hard-won habit of watching the hills closely and knowing when the light is about to change.

Spencer works in watercolor on cold-pressed blocks, painting flat so the pigment pools and settles on its own. His painterly scenes capture the foothills above Boise in late summer, when the slopes turn the color of a paper bag and the evening ridges stack up like cutouts in a toy theater. He races to finish each one before the porch light comes on. The soft washes and quiet, warm palette make these canvases a natural fit for living rooms, bedrooms, reading corners and entryways, anywhere you want a calm window onto the open West. Below are Holloway’s canvases in our shop, ready to hang.