Aagard lives in central Utah in a rural community with his wife and three children. He enjoys fishing, camping, working in his garden, and spending time with his family. He also enjoys volunteering at the Senior Citizen Center and working with Boy Scouts. He has been a full time artist for six years, and in 2007, built himself a wonderful new studio. His education includes general ed and drawing classes at Snow College and Salt Lake Community College. He also took a year of watercolor classes from Utah watercolor artist Harold Peterson, which he says made a world of difference in how he approached art. His primary education has come from studying great art and consulting other artists.

 Aagard began his career as a watercolor artist. In 2000, after seeing a show of paintings by Gary Ernest Smith he was hooked on the power possible with oil paints. With encouragement and feedback from Smith, he set his hand to paint oils with a knife.” I never get bored painting with oil. There are so many possibilities, so many techniques to try that one could never exhaust the love of learning.  I have found that my work has a more dimensional feel or depth when painted with knife, and often times the texture is more fun than the composition,” he says. His paintings have won several state and local awards and shows in several galleries in Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah. They are part of many museum, public, private and corporate collections. He has had solo exhibitions in Park City, Alpine, Ogden and Provo Utah, Palm Desert California, Ruidoso and New Mexico and Scottsdale Arizona. He was featured in Southwest Art in Best of the West Nov. 2005 and 2006, and was featured in Western Art Collector Magazine Nov. 2007. He has an image in a Houghton-Mifflin textbook in conjunction with a Robert Frost poem “Pastures”, and also a book cover painting for a book of poetry.

  ARTIST STATEMENT

As I travel around in the ever ongoing quest for new and wonderful subjects to paint I am struck again and again with the many faces that beauty takes. But what gives me the greatest pleasure is the feelings that the land evokes. I often feel as if my soul is enlarged, and my spirit recharged as well as an overwhelming sense of gratitude. All this drives me to paint.

My hope is that others in some measure will be able to feel these things coming through In my paintings. My goal is that others can feel their spirits lifted and connect with the emotion of time and place.

To me art is magical. Magic like my childhood growing up in a tiny town in the backwoods of Western Montana leaving the sweetest memories. Magic to take colors mixed in oils and mix and apply those colors in such a way as to create something as great as can be conceived.

 AWARDS