Show Preview | Cowboy Artists of America’s 60th Annual Exhibition

Sixty years ago, in a widely and rightly mythologized meeting, cowboy artists Joe Beeler, Charlie Dye, John Wade Hampton and George Phippen drafted the bylaws of a new arts organization—the Cowboy Artists of America—at a tavern in Sedona, Arizona. Could there have been a better place and group to set a legend in motion? Starting this year, on October 2 and 3, the Cowboy Artists of America will host its 60th annual exhibition and sale at its new home, The Legacy at the Stock Yards in Denver. The event inaugurates a new chapter in its history, a five-year partnership with the National Western.

Collectors, artists and Western art aficionados will be able to attend events with tickets throughout the two days. Highlights include a black-tie evening featuring new works from some of the finest contemporary Western artists; opportunities to meet members of the Cowboy Artists; and events celebrating 60 years as an essential participant in the field of Western art and in the preservation of the culture of the American West.

Artists have long coveted an invitation to join the CAA, which selects the artists for their devotion to “authenticity, craftsmanship and storytelling,” says Wes Allison, president and CEO of National Western. The organization includes 17 active members, along with 13 emeritus members who can submit work to the show each year. They also welcome guest artists to every exhibition; the 2026 invitees are Shawn Cameron and Thomas Blackshear II. Cameron paints exquisite cowboys and horses; her style combines strong drawing with atmospheric light and color. Blackshear’s Western figurative work goes beyond portraiture, finding moments of inner lives made manifest to the viewer.

The art in this year’s show tells a story, as a look at a few of the works will attest. In Dave Santillanes’ striking landscape STILL WATERS, the viewer accompanies a rider and packhorse as they seemingly discover a high mountain lake, a shadowed jewel that might well symbolize the American West itself, as it first appeared to Native Americans, European explorers and pioneers. Albin Veselka’s similarly impressive oil, HOW THE WEST WAS WON, epitomizes the losses that came with Western expansion as a raft in turbulent waters tosses two of its occupants into the roiling, treacherous current.

Two paintings, Mikel Donahue’s A DAY IN THE LIFE and Grant Redden’s A CHANGE OF SEASONS, along with Dustin Payne’s bronze TRAIL DUST, present the work of the West—herding cattle, riding the trail, and keeping the horses healthy and properly shod. Payne’s bronze elevates one of the principal symbols of the American West—the longhorn—to heroic, mythical status.

Finally, emeritus CAA member Martin Grelle’s painting BLENDING CULTURES portrays the possibility that the strife of the past might give way to a new, vibrant, hybrid form, blending the best of the various cultures that make their home in the West.

One wonders what Beeler, Dye, Hampton and Phippen would make of their idea 60 years on. Given the strength of the institution they founded and its ability to seek out and find new sources of excellence even as the West itself changes and changes again, they would surely smile, not only at the endurance of the CAA, but at its capacity to adapt without compromising its mission or principles. —James D. Balestrieri

contact informationcowboyartistsofamerica.com

This story appeared in the October/November 2026 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Subscribe today to read every issue in its entirety.

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