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Steamboat Springs — Colorado artist Tom Lockhart has spent decades perfecting the style of landscape oil painting he describes as "far more difficult than it is to be an abstract artist or a realist."

"It's taken me a long time; I'm still practicing the craft of this genre," Lockhart said. "Just when you think you've got it whipped, you end up with a whole series of other battles in front of you."

In recent years, those battles have included a shoulder surgery that saddled Lockhart's ability to paint large pieces. But as far as art goes, Lockhart has won lately more often than he's lost, with awards from the Oil Painters of America and the Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters.

A one-man show of Lockhart's work opens with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. today at Wildhorse Gallery. The exhibit includes scenes from Rocky Mountain aspen country to rural farmlands to Montana.

The show will be Lockhart's first chance to show new, large works since his 2005 surgery. He's been looking forward to getting back to pieces that have dimensions closer to 5 feet than 1 foot or 2 feet.

"When you look at a large painting, you actually can get into it because it's so large you feel like you're immersed in it," Lockhart said. "People who have large walls and large rooms, you can't put a 12-by-16 (inch painting) on it, it looks like a postage stamp."

Lockhart said the goal of his work, large or small, is to create a mock-up of his subject rather than an exact replica.

"As artists, we're illusionists," Lockhart said.

"We paint - and this is why it's far more difficult to be a traditional painter - halfway between realism and abstraction. I'm creating the illusion of grasses or trees, mountain and sky," he said.

By using sketches, photographs and plein air works to inform oil paintings he completes in the studio, Lockhart said he has honed his skill to suggest true images.

"It's far more difficult to be in between than it is to be an abstract or a realist - where you're either copying something, or you're using shapes and colors and dyes, and you're putting it together in an arrangement which doesn't require any drawing skill," Lockhart said.

In the 20 or so works on display at Wildhorse, gallery owner Shirley Stocks said Lockhart's art backs up his apparent confidence.

"He's been an artist for a long time, and he's paid his dues, and it shows in his work," Stocks said.