Cowgirl Up! Art from the Other Half of the West marks a wonderful time in which we turn our attention solely to the creative prowess and ingenuity of women artists in the Western art world. The springtime event brings together some of the very best in the genre to showcase a range of techniques, styles, mediums and subjects, from the traditional to the contemporary. Opening weekend is set for Friday, March 31, through Sunday, April 2, and all artwork will remain on view through September 3.
Michelle Kondos, Crossing Over, oil on linen, 24 x 30”Participating artists at the 2023 Cowgirl Up! include Sheila Cottrell, Jane Coleman, Rebecca Tobey, Kwani Povi Winder, Lisa Danielle, Sally Delap-John, Barbara Meikle, Michelle Kondos, Sharon Markwardt and Sherry Cobb-Kelleher, to name a few.
Cobb-Kelleher, who is based in Colorado, creates paintings capturing moments of time, drawn from the Western lifestyle she lives. Working primarily in oil, with secondary mediums of pencil and watercolor, her work explores themes of the true Western lifestyle, including ranching and everything that goes with it, including horses. She paints animals as well as people and the environment that surrounds them daily. 
Kwani Povi Winder, Always With Me, oil on linen mounted to board, 18 x 16¾”In Crossing Over, Kondos also depicts equine subjects. Two horses wade through deep water, led by a cowgirl who is clearly comfortable with her work. A warm evening light reflects across the rippling water as the background fades into soft shrubbery at the water’s edge. “I wanted to hint at both the fragile delicacy of life and the sweetness of the way we share our time on Earth with these magnificent creatures who’ve chosen to walk the path with us,” Kondos says.
Sherry Cobb-Kelleher, Fly Swatting 101, oil on linen panel, 12 x 9”
Lisa Danielle, Shield of the Sky Horse, acrylic, 40 x 30”
Animals continue to take center stage with Meikle’s oil Dawn Patrol at Lake Clark, showing a bear walking toward the viewer in the artist’s signature vibrant palette. “My palette is always colorful, sometimes on the pastel side and sometimes not!” she reflects. “It’s the subject that inspires the intensity of color and gesture and texture. My bronzes are directly related to my paintings in the sense that I use hot color patinas to create the visual that I desire.”
A mother, and her child swaddled against her, peer down a tunnel in Winder’s Always With Me. We can’t see their expressions, but there is an undeniable sense of closeness between the two. Winder says, “I have always been intentional in my decision to include my children in all that I do, and I often wear them on my back as I paint. This is a painting of me and my youngest daughter. She is wrapped in a blanket in a style like my Puebloan ancestors would have done. The bond between mother and child is special and we’ve created ours through art.”
Barbara Meikle, Dawn Patrol at Lake Clark, oil on canvas, 48 x 24”; Sharon Markwardt, Triumph of the Century, oil with gold leaf on wood, 80 x 22”A harmonious connection to nature and all its creatures inspires Markwardt’s bright, distinctive art. These animals’ ability to instill wonder, strength and humor moves the artist to paint in colors as intense as those emotions. Markwardt’s recent incorporation of metal leaf adds an extra sparkle of life to her subjects, and most collectors comment that the colorful art makes them feel happy. “You just have to smile when those donkeys look at you!” she says.
Rebecca Tobey, Nimbus, bronze, ed. of 50, 33 x 18 x 11”Danielle has great respect for Native American medicine items, some of which can be seen in her acrylic Shield of the Sky Horse. “Shields, war shirts and headdresses, particularly where eagle feathers have been employed, have been imbued with a personal spiritual power,” says the artist. “To share just the raw beauty of these, my paintings often showcase combined aesthetic elements that engage the viewer and their own imagination, while avoiding invasion of even ancient personal privacy.”
Sheila Cottrell, Guarding the Herd, oil, 20 x 24”Horses are expressed both in motion and at rest in two paintings that Coleman is bringing to the 2023 Cowgirl Up!. “On a hot summer day these three horses found relief from the sun beneath the foliage of a large stand of willow trees. They were quite visible from the road where I took the picture near Crowheart, Wyoming,” she says of Summer Shade. Describing another piece, Over the Top, Coleman says, “At a full gallop a herd of Spear Ranch horses came down the hill being chased by two wranglers. They safely descended into the pasture below where we were waiting with our cameras.”
Sally Delap-John, Las Trampas Shadows, 37½ x 37½”; Sherry Cobb-Kelleher, Tiny’s Shadow, oil on linen panel, 10 x 8”Delap-John’s oil Las Trampas Shadows is a scene of the town of Las Trampas, located a few miles north of Truchas on the High Road to Taos. “Both villages have large adobe churches dating from the mid-1750s,” Delap-John notes. “In late autumn, the shadows are long with the low sun. Reverent villagers in Las Trampas apply endless layers of new mud to maintain these prominent structures where time and weather work to erode them back to essential elements…Whether buildings are catching a last glow of sunlight or streaming out long cool shadows, the play of light pulls in the painter.”
Sharon Markwardt, Magical Thunder, oil with silver leaf on canvas, 48 x 24”; Sharon Markwardt, Wacky ASSessment, oil on canvas, 24 x 36” or 36 x 24”“My ‘cowboy cousins’ are a great help for me, from constantly posing [for my paintings] to once raising me in the bucket of their backhoe and trotting horses beneath me for one of my stagecoach paintings,” says Cottrell. “But probably most appreciated is that they have so much fun helping me dream up titles for paintings.” In her piece Guarding the Herd, a Native American man on horseback guides a group of horses through a shallow pond filled with flowers.
Jane Coleman, Over the Top, watercolor on Arches, 18 x 27”
Lisa Danielle, Arizona Nights, acrylic, 12 x 16”
North American beasts and other figures are rendered in sleek, abstract forms in the sculptures of Tobey. She says, “Recently I was asked which room in my home is my favorite, and I said, ‘my studio!’ I head out there every morning...When I begin the piece, I respond to every added element…I never have a preconceived notion of what the piece will look like when it’s finished, and somehow it evolves into something that pleases me when it’s finished.”
Collectors can explore these works and many others this spring during Cowgirl Up! at the Desert Caballeros Western Museum in Wickenburg, Arizona. —
Cowgirl Up! Art from the Other Half of the West
March 31-September 3, 2023
Desert Caballeros Western Museum
21 N. Frontier Street
Wickenburg, AZ 85390
www.westernmuseum.org
Powered by Froala Editor
