They may have seen his work in Santa Fe, N.M. at the Meyer East Gallery last year.

Maybe they saw it at the Lisa Harris Gallery in Seattle, or in other galleries in Missoula, Mont., Ketchum, Idaho or in Kirkland.

One thing is certain, the work of Greenbank painter Kent Lovelace gets around.

Whatever the reason, it’s still great to have a national art magazine knocking on the door.

Lovelace is the featured cover artist in the September issue of Artist’s Magazine. The article, “Catch the Glow, Copper as a Surface for Oil,” features Lovelace’s painting “Cadanet” on the cover and takes an in-depth look at the artist’s extraordinary skill for painting with oils on copper.

“It hasn’t happened to me before,” Lovelace said of making the cover of a national publication.

“They approached me last winter to do an article. The interview with the writer took a couple of hours and then the editor wrote it up again,” he said.

Then he waited a while.

“I didn’t know I was going to be on the cover, so that was a nice surprise,” Lovelace added.

An artist friend in Montana called him, green with envy.

It’s something that rarely happens to an artist without pushing for it, Lovelace said, and it’s helpful because it helps to add value to the work.

“Gallery owners and collectors are always happy to know I’m being covered,” the artist said.

“It adds credibility. It’s hard to put a value on art. My paintings aren’t wildly expensive, but I can’t afford them. Being on the cover of a magazine helps to reaffirm value; it’s one of the best things that can happen,” he added.

Any publicity for an artist is good and Lovelace is enjoying the response.

The news has his email inbox full daily and it even garnered a request from a publisher who is producing a book about artists’ materials to which Lovelace will contribute.

“I’m getting emails from other artists, too, which is always nice. It ups the conversation about art; about where I go and what I do,” Lovelace said.

The article mentions the similarities Lovelace notices between the places of his Californian childhood and the untouched areas of France.

“Most of the paintings used in the article are out of the Dordogne. I was raised in the hills just outside of Berkeley, before it was industrialized. It’s all been paved over; the oldest grape vineyard, the walnut groves. Dordogne looks almost exactly like it was,” he said, with a hint of nostalgia.

He likes the piece that was used for the cover, a piece that was captured in the Provence region of France where, along with Dordogne, Lovelace also has spent lots of time taking photographs. He works mainly from photographs.

“It’s a good painting of a scrubby little field with a scrubby little bush in Provence,” he said.

He is currently at work on his next show for a gallery in Charleston, N.C., and for the upcoming Whidbey Open Studio Tour Oct. 8 and 9.

The series will feature pieces depicting the Burgundy region of France, along with the Dordogne.

“And, you never know, there might be some pieces in there from Whidbey,” he said.

Lovelace will have 50 copies of the September 2011 issue of the Artist’s Magazine available at his Black Sheep Studio during the tour to give away to patrons who buy his work. The tour is free and features 37 studios, with more than 50 artists.

For more information about Lovelace, visit his website www.kentlovelace.com.