SHEILA COTTRELL

Cowboy life in the West holds an intensely personal meaning for Sheila Cottrell. In 1900 her great-grandparents trekked by covered wagon from Texas to Bowie, AZ. Her grandad was a deputy sherriff in nearby TOmbstone. Cottrell herself spent childhood summers on a ranch in surrounding Cochise County and, during the school year, at her family's city place in Tucson.. "There are so many great old stories in our family, about outlaws and renegade Indians and wild horses," she says. "So my biggest interest as an artist has always been simply celebrating my family's heritage."

That celebration has gone on as far back as she can remember. "The first drawing I really got a pat on the head for was on our ranch, before I was 5" she recalls. Her skills continued to flourish in high school and on through art studies at the University of Arizona. She later drew and painted part time while raising three daughters and working as a commercial real estate broker.

Art fully became her primary calling 22 years ago when she began taking workshops from renowned western painter James Reynolds, now a valued peer. 'He pounded into my head the basics," she says, "such as composition, color values, and the importance of negative space." All are key elements in her sensuous oil painting style, which she describes as impressionistic realism. NOw working out of her studio in her high-ceilinged Tucson home, Cottrell applies her hard-won mastery to cowboy subjects that , whether old or new, are 'all basically family history", she says. "Even when I paint contemporary cowboys, it'll be be my cousins out on the ranch where we're rebudiling one of the old homesteads.' Cottrell's work may be seen at Trailside Galleries, Scotsdale, AZ, and Jackson, WY; Claggert/Rey Gallery, Vail, CO, Big Horn Galleries, Tubac, AZ and www.sheilacottrell.com.