Colorado artist Chula Beauregard captures the soul of ranchland and mountain light, preserving the beauty and heritage of the American West one brushstroke at a time.
Chula Beauregard has spent most of her life in Colorado’s mountains. And, yet, the Western impressionist landscape painter still can’t get over the stunning, unspoiled scenery that surrounds her on a daily basis.
From her home in the Rockies, Beauregard ventures out to capture the authentic spirit of the American West with her paintbrush. Though she’s traveled all over the world, she continues to find inspiration right in her backyard — in golden-yellow aspen leaves dancing on the breeze, in the Yampa River winding its way through the valley, in cattle grazing against a backdrop of snowcapped peaks.
“The more I’m out there, the more deeply in love I am with it — the ranching culture and heritage, the cowboy thing, all of it ... I just appreciate it even more every time I go out and paint,” says Beauregard, a sixth-generation Coloradan whose family first settled in the Centennial State in 1856.
Into the Sun, 2024. Oil on linen panel, 10 x 8 inches.
Beauregard grew up in Steamboat Springs. But when she was around 11 years old, her family packed up and moved to the Bahamas, where they spent nine months living aboard a sailboat. Her mother brought a watercolor set along for the journey, and, one day, she encouraged Beauregard to use it.
The family returned to Colorado, but for Beauregard the trip was transformative. She hasn’t stopped painting since. “I realized that I was seeing the world through paintings,” she says. “I would see something and instead of just saying, ‘Oh, that’s a lighthouse,’ I would think, Oh there’s a painting.”
After studying art at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, Beauregard joined the Peace Corps and spent two years volunteering in Gabon. While there, she painted and sketched nearly every day, capturing scenes from her small village in Central Africa.
Life eventually brought her back to Colorado’s Yampa Valley, where she now lives with her husband and two teenage sons. Being a mother and a professional artist has been challenging. But, Beauregard says, balancing the two roles has allowed her to slow down and become intimately familiar with northwest Colorado. “There is such an abundance of natural beauty that it makes my job easy,” she says. “The landscape is an infinite well. It’s really deep. It never ceases to amaze me.”
April at the Monger Ranch, 2025. Oil on linen panel, 8 x 10 inches.
Searching for subjects, Beauregard drives around rural Routt County until she spies a compelling scene. Once she finds one, she hops out of the car, sets up, and gets to work. She’ll use that plein air painting as a resource for her studio work. “I’m out there that day to get accurate colors and the feeling,” she says.
A planner by nature, she spends several days doing detailed color studies and meticulously mapping out the piece’s composition before she starts painting. Most of her pieces get sent to galleries, shows, and exhibitions, but Beauregard also regularly creates large commissioned paintings for homeowners in Steamboat Springs.
Recently, she’s focused her attention on the many Routt County cattle ranches and farms that are being preserved for future generations through the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust. Over the last three decades, the organization has worked with more than 400 families to protect more than 810,000 acres of productive agricultural land. “It gives me so much hope, and it makes our valley a magical place,” she says. “All I can do is go out and paint it and then show it. I feel so lucky to have the privilege to stand there. If I can bring it back and change some minds and hearts, all the better.”
Painting scenes from those properties highlights the importance of conserving Colorado’s Western heritage, but Beauregard’s scope is even grander. “I have often felt like I am standing here, vertical on the Earth, seeing this amazing beauty that’s given to us as a gift,” she says. “And as I bear witness, I create things that I can share.”
Chula Beauregard is represented by The Broadmoor Galleries in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Simpson-Gallagher Gallery in Cody, Wyoming. The Colorado Cattlemen’s Agriculture Land Trust exhibition, which will feature Beauregard’s April at the Monger Ranch, opens May 1, 2026, at the Tread of Pioneers Museum in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. For more information on the artist, visit chulabeauregard.com.
From our October 2025 issue.
PHOTOGRAPHY: (header) Gold Rush, 2024. Oil on linen on aluminum composite material, 18 x 24 inches; (all art) Courtesy of the artist
