The Center for Western Studies

Raised on a working ranch on the Red River in Texas, Donna Howell-Sickles attended a two-room school. From there, she attended Texas Tech University in Lubbock, and then spent several years teaching for the Washington State Art Commission in Seattle. A postcard portraying a 1920s-era cowgirl changed her career forever, motivating Howell-Sickles to research real cowgirls of the 1910s and '20s, which she vividly portrays in her paintings. A nationally acclaimed and award-winning artist, she was the 1997 C.M. Russell Auction Honored Guest.

Grace Hudson was born, lived most of her life, and died in Potter Valley, near Ukiah, California. The daughter of a newspaperman and photographer, she became interested in Native Americans as a young girl, and this was to become her specialty as an adult artist. At age fourteen, she left Potter Valley to study at the School of Design in San Francisco. Upon completion of her studies in 1884, she returned to the Ukiah area where she began teaching painting and working as an illustrator. Five years later she opened her own studio. Hudson was known as "The Painter Lady of California."

She left over 684 oil paintings and numerous pieces in other media, including weavings, hooked rugs, and monochromatic sketches. The Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah has the largest collection of her remaining work. .

"Haunter of the Silences" "Oil/Canvas, 1912

Born near Big Grove, Iowa, Frank Tenney Johnson spent his childhood wandering along the Missouri River in the Council Bluffs area. After learning all he could from the teachers available in his hometown, he went to New York and studied at the Art Students League. As he improved his skills, he longed for the West, where he could paint the subjects he liked best. He settled on a ranch in Colorado and became a successful illustrator for magazines and books. In 1920, with some urging from a friend, he moved to California.

There is a high note of romance, pathos, and poetry in his work. In the opinion of many qualified critics, he was a superb draftsman who portrayed the horse as well or better than any other. Few American artists have equaled his nocturnal scenes. He avoided violence, with only an occasional scene in which powder is burned and horses plunge. Nor did he portray the Native American as wistful objects of subjugation and reservation confinement, longing for past glories and deprived by a sense of inferiority.

At the peak of his career, Johnson's life came to an unusually unfortunate end. In December 1938, he attended a party where he gave a social kiss to his hostess. Within two weeks time, both were dead of spinal meningitis.

"Wolf Robe, The Guardian", Bronze, 1991

West Virginia, its rich traditions and culture, nurtured an artistic sensibility in Burl Jones that would develop into one of the country's most respected careers in bronze sculpture. Born and raised near Charleston, Jones excelled in academics and athletics. He attended West Virginia University on a football scholarship and graduated summa cum laude from the School of Dentistry in 1966.

After nearly twenty-five years of dentistry, Jones shifted gears to focus entirely on his sculpture. Wildlife, mountain men, Native Americans, and fishermen and hunters have all come to have a life of their own under his skilled hands.

Jones lives and works in his studio in the Missouri Breaks of Montana. .

One of the best-known illustrators in New York and then painter of Western subjects, Tom Lovell paid close attention to details in his work, and because of this, seldom completed more than a dozen major oil paintings a year.

Lovell was born in New York City and attended high school in Nutley, New Jersey, where he graduated as valedictorian of his class. In 1931, he received a bachelor of fine arts from Syracuse University.

His paintings focus on historical Western subjects, such as the relations between white men and Indians and early expeditions. In 1975, he was elected to the Cowboy Artists of America.

Lovell lived in Arizona and was killed in a car accident in 1997. His work has significantly risen in value since his death.

Terry Murphy is a fourth generation Montanan, born and raised in the Helena Valley of Montana. He is self-taught, studying the masters of sculpture from the past to the present. He was inspired to start sculpturing in 1971 and devotes his full time to the art of sculpture, specializing in North American Indian works, western themes, wildlife and sporting art, as well as contemporary subject matter.

Newman Myrah was born in Canada and raised in Deerlodge, Montana. He studied at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, the University of Nebraska, Reed College, and the Portland Art Museum. He worked for many years as a commercial illustrator and art director, and now paints the west of the cowboys and Indians in oil.

Unlike most of us, Myrah gets better with age. He is one of the two artists who have been invited to all 34 C.M. Russell Museum Auctions of Western Art each March.

Jim Norton was born in Lyman, Utah, and studied briefly at Brigham Young University until one of his professors suggested that he just get out and paint. In 1990, he was elected membership in the Cowboy Artists of America.

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