Radio Interview by Red Steagall; video by Pam Stevenson, Agave Productions Inc., for Historical League.
The late Bill Owen, Kirkland, Arizona, was a cowboy artist extraordinaire. Born in Gila Bend, Arizona, he came by his chosen profession naturally, as his father was a cowboy in the early 1900s and his mother was an artist. Bill’s self-taught artistic talents allowed him to capture the spirit and essence of the contemporary working cowboy through drawing, painting in both watercolors and oils, and sculpting.
Bill Owen specialized in portraying the working cowboy in his natural setting, not a romanticized image. He was proud of the authenticity of his art. “It’s important to me that I accurately paint what cowboys are, what they do, how they work, including every detail, down to the type of rigging they use, such as the saddles. I feel that I’m recording what will someday be the history of the contemporary cowboy of this area, mostly in Arizona.”
In expressing his philosophy, Mr. Owen said, “I feel that the subject has to be genuine and not something that I dreamed in my mind. It has to be something that I have seen, and ninety-nine percent of everything that I do is not set up. I don’t have models. I’m with the cowboys and when they see themselves in my paintings, they know the people and the horses. That is so important because I do not want to have anything false in my work.”
Owning a ranch and competing in rodeos further deepened Bill’s knowledge and understanding of today’s working cowboy. A roping accident in 1989 caused Bill to lose sight in one eye, and he was forced to give up sculpting but continued painting. Through the years, Bill learned to deal with the loss of depth perception and, missing the creativity of sculpting, he returned to the medium in 2002.
Bill was a member of the Cowboy Artists of America since 1973, when he was thirty-one, and he served as its president three different times. His award-winning western art has been exhibited around the world, including Paris, France and Beijing, China. He won thirty-one awards, including three Best of Show Awards and four CAA awards. The latter is a highly coveted award that is voted on by the general membership and, in essence, is recognition from one's peers. The Cowboy Hall of Fame presented him with the Frederic Remington Award for Artistic Merit.
Owen was especially proud of the Arizona Cowpuncher’s Scholarship Organization that he founded in 1995. These scholarship funds help finance college educations for young people from the Arizona ranching community. Since Bill’s death, the board named Bill’s widow Valerie as president. These benefits will continue to assist students for decades to come.
