Western stories are told in pictures or words. A new show in Arizona brings them together.
The picture maker is Colorado painter Thomas Blackshear II, who was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 2020, joining the ranks of Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth and Winslow Homer. After turning to Western art in a style he calls Western Nouveau, he won the Prix de West Purchase Award in 2024 at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
Thomas Blackshear II painting at the 2025 Coors Western Art Exhibit & Sale in Denver.
The wordsmith is Dr. Mark Sublette, a former Navy physician who founded Medicine Man Gallery in 1992 in Tucson, Arizona. An authority on the art of Maynard Dixon and the arts of the American West, Sublette is also the author of the Charles Bloom Murder Mystery series. In 2022, he was awarded the C.M. Russell Heritage Award for Art History presented by the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana.
Jimmy Lee, oil, 27 x 21 in.
“About a year ago,” Blackshear explains, “Mark asked if I was interested in doing a show with him. I was working on a series of sketches of my Neon Cowboys. I was thinking of turning them into a game that I would call Neon Cowboy Posse: The Ten Most Wanted (Plus One). When Mark saw the images he suggested, ‘Why don’t we turn it into a story? You come up with the names and the backgrounds.’”
Blackshear’s 11 paintings and numerous drawings will be shown at Medicine Man Gallery with Sublette’s 1898-inspired catalog/pulp fiction story. The major new show opens March 13 in Tucson.
Gideon McCoy, oil, 24 x 23 in.
“One character is an older gentleman,” Blackshear relates. “When I was trying to come up with names, I heard the name Gideon McCoy. He’s become the main character. He used to work for an inventor who worked with Nicola Tesla.” Tesla introduced inert gas-filled tubes to light the 1893 World’s Fair. Later, neon gas tubes glowed red and orange, the colors of McCoy’s scarf.
“Since we were doing a posse,” Blackshear continues, “I thought, ‘Let’s do these different characters of every race of cowboys who existed—four white, three Black, two Native American, one Hispanic and one Asian. Asian workers had worked on the railroad and when the railroad was completed, they became cowboys. The black cowboys are brothers and their step-brother is the ‘plus one.’ They had taken care of horses and cattle on plantations in the South and migrated after Reconstruction. The Chinese cowboy was a member of a dynasty in China before coming to America. I named him Jimmy Lee.”
Sam Lone Fox, oil, 22½ x 21 in.
He explains, “In 2017, my friend, the painter Morgan Weistling, told me there were changes going on in the Western art market and encouraged me to do some paintings. The paintings sold and I began thinking, ‘OK. Here I am around all these established artists who are very good. How can I stand out? I don’t want to do a certain look that will get me pegged. If I do Black cowboys, people will peg me as the artist who does Black cowboys. I knew I could do more with Native Americans because of their and my spiritual background. But, still, how am I going to stand out among these amazing artists?…Everyone has been influenced by Maynard Dixon. He was the first Western artist to look different from the others. His work is Art Deco married to a Western theme.”
He continues, “I began to think of blending portraits of traditional cowboys and Native Americans with the organic, decorative and flowing lines of Art Nouveau and came up with the idea of ‘Western Nouveau.’ I could get into the ethereal and break out of the box.” And break out of the box he did.
Ezra Jones, oil, 29 x 20 in.
“I had been thinking there’s only so much you can do in Western art—prairies, mountains, cowboys, Indians. The easiest thing for me to paint is a portrait,” the artist says. “I want you to get to know who this person is. I do personalities. I have files of photos that give me inspiration and ideas. I’ve been blessed to look beyond the photo. I may use the design as it is or I may use it in a way I want to.”
His Neon Cowboys are stylized and feature long necks and colorful bandanas. Neon colors like purple and blue appear in the flesh of the dark-skinned cowboys.
Coin, oil, 24 x 18 in.
Blackshear’s background is in commercial illustration where he learned to tell a story. His Western portraits are full of vitality and his subjects’ eyes invite communication and contemplation. “The painting lives,” he says. “Every image and every piece is alive underneath the surface. No matter what you put down that thing is still alive and that’s going to have an influence on the viewer…When I do animals or a character, I’m like a director. I have to feel the movement of a gesture. I have to get into that position to feel it. If I’m doing a big cat, I have to growl to feel it.”
Tex, oil, 24 x 18 in.
In 1977, after graduating from the American Academy of Art in Chicago, he worked for the Hallmark Card Company in Kansas City, Missouri, and was apprentice to Mark English, a legend in the field of illustration. Blackshear became a freelance illustrator in 1982.
He created the first Star Wars collector plates, among others. He has created more than 30 U.S. postage stamps, and his clients included Disney Pictures, George Lucas Studios and Universal Studios, as well as International Wildlife and National Geographic magazines. He also began Ebony Visions, which has been the top-selling Black figurine collectible in the United States for the past 20 years. In 2006, he had a one-man show at the Vatican in Rome where he unveiled his painting of Pope John Paul II for the 25th anniversary of the Pope John Paul II Foundation.
The irony of his background in plates, stamps and figurines—and his rise to the top of the Western art market—is that Blackshear was the outsider looking in. He was the Neon Cowboy. Today, he’s made his own place in the club, and Neon Cowboys are his subjects. —
Thomas Blackshear II: Neon Cowboy Posse – The Ten Most Wanted Plus One
March 13-April 2, 2026
Medicine Man Gallery
6872 E. Sunrise Drive, Suite 130, Tucson, AZ 85750
(520) 722-7798 www.medicinemangallery.com
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