Saddle Weary

                                                      An original acrylic painting, on stretched canvas
                                                      20 X 16", unframed
                                                     


                                                        ( Click on image to enlarge )

   
     Oh, yes!  The heat, the dust, the thirst, the stubborn cattle and the long hours
in the saddle: that's the life!  Right?
     Little boys who run around wearing cowboy hats, chaps, and holsters with toy
six-guns, while twirling their lariats, often proclaim that they are going to be cowboys
when they grow up.  But, very few of them retain that idealistic view of the cowboy
life, as they gain a more mature perspective.
     The rugged, heroic figure of the cowboy, and also that of the noble Indian, are
central to the mythology of the American West, and their images have always been
the heart and soul of Western Art.  They have been romanticized in books, paintings,
and finally the movies, from way back, as far as Albert Bierstadt,, James Fenimore
Cooper, and Thomas Moran, up to Owen Wister, Frederic Remington and Charles
Russell, and beyond, to the present day.  They have become so embedded in our
mythological, American narrative, that we will probably always continue to elaborate
on the fantasy, rather than look honestly at the reality.  But maybe that is what art
is all about.