You're the sons of Charlie Russell
and I'm proud to call you friends,
You spread the paint and shape the clay where western art begins,
And your callin' is a hard one
if you really do it right,
High lonesome like a cowboy
on a starless, stormy night.
You've drawed this bronc called western art and I wish you lots of luck,
Pull your hat down tight, take a 'holt and holler' "Let 'er buck!"
But you can't be shy on touch or try and get this outlaw rode,
'Cause the times when you are timid are the times when you get throwed.
Now there's them who'll try to tell you that the West is done and dead, "Forget about this nonsense,
go do something else instead, And get some uptown ideas if you really want to sell," Then you'll just look 'em in the eye
and you tell 'em "Go to Hell!"
'Cause the cowboy and the Indian
are still among us yet, The land's still wild toward the place the sun has always set, Don't hide out in your studio,
Cut loose and roam about, Go see the West before it's gone and all your time runs out.
The kid from Judith Basin blazed the trail for all of you, And I think he'd tell you "much obliged" for doin' what you do.
This poem is done, the way it starts is also how it ends, You're the sons of Charlie Russell and I'm proud to call you friends.
DON HEDGPETH | OCTOBER 1998 |
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By Don Hedgpeth
Honorary CAA Member
Sunup crept slowly into the cold shadowed canyons of old Sonora. The vaqueros huddled close by a campfire to ease the bone-deep chill left behind by the November night. Three gringo cowboys stood with the vaqueros, sharing tin cups of strong camp coffee and warming their bridle bits at the fire as they listened for the sound of horses coming in. The three cowboys did not seem out of place in the primitive Mexican cow camp. Borders are not barriers for cowboys. The commonality of their calling transcends such difficulties as different languages and the like, as is also the way with artists and with art.
Those three cowboys who stood at the vaqueros' fire on that frosty fall morning in 1964 were Charlie Dye, John Hampton, and Joe Beeler - each one adept as a painter of Western subjects and wise in the ways of open country and cattle. And there, in the crucible of a cow camp, the spark was struck that would fuse together the pure elemental essences of cowboys and art. Crossing back over the border into Arizona when the roundup was over, those three men brought with them the vivid impressions of their adventure, along with a strong shared sense of friendship and the origins of an idea, which, when fully fleshed out, would become the Cowboy Artists of America.
These were the heirs to a cowboy artist tradition that traced back to others, like Charlie Russell and Will James, and to the lean legacy of a scant handful of artists who brought to their paintings and sculpture an air of authenticity achieved through a hands-on and horseback perspective. Western art, and particularly that portraying cowpunchers, had always been the province of solitary types who prowled, like old coyotes, alone at the ragged edge of the cultural mainstream. But it is the nature of all of God's creatures, even cowboy artists and coyotes, to crave the comfort and company of their own kind.
Charlie Dye, John Hampton, and Joe Beeler were all three accomplished artists with successful careers and established individual reputations by the time they found themselves together in that Mexican cow camp in 1964. Thinking back on that time below the border, each of them knew that they had been enlivened and inspired by the experience because they had been there and shared it all together. All three lived in Arizona, and they stayed closer in touch now, encouraging each other's efforts and swapping stories about horses and art. They sought out others too, who, like themselves, kept a boot in each of the two different worlds of cowboys and artists, and seemed somehow not to belong entirely in either.
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