2019-03-01 Western Art Collector

One person who has always been struck by

Russell’s work, as well as his unique look in

the annals of Western art, is Missouri painter

Andy Thomas. Though the two artists’ lives

never intersected—Russell died more than 30

years before Thomas was born—their artwork

has plenty of overlap: rowdy cowboys on

horseback, brave Native American warriors

setting across the plains, and thrilling action

scenes that show how these characters could

interact with the West. “I grew up with Charlie

Russell. My dad liked Western art so he exposed

me to him very early,” he says. “In our house

it was all Russell, Remington and Norman

Rockwell, and I was certainly influenced by all

of their work, especially Russell.”

In 2008, Thomas did something that would

explicitly link him to Russell: he painted him,

and then brought the work to The Russell in

Russell’s hometown, Great Falls, Montana, on

Russell’s birthday.

“There was a bit of a risk doing that. It

was very different, and then after I submitted

it I immediately had this self-doubt. Artists

are a cautious bunch sometimes, and I started

worrying it wouldn’t get a single bid,” Thomas

remembers. “At that time I had only really

painted Russell one other time for a small

show in my hometown of Carthage, Missouri.

That painting featured campfire storytellers

and included Russell and Remington next to

each other. I had a lot of fun painting him, and

I knew I wanted to paint him again.”

When the call went out for works for The

Russell: An Exhibition and Sale to Benefit the

C.M. Russell Museum, Thomas, who had

largely been selling art from a van as he and

his wife crisscrossed the country to attend art

fairs, was met with a lucky break. “I had made

a concerted effort to get in a big show and that

year, in a weird twist, The Russell wanted artists

to submit their actual paintings for inclusion in

the sale. They had previously asked for 35mm

slides, and I never thought those represented

my work very well. Once they could see the

work firsthand, I got in,” he says. “It would be

an important milestone in my career because

The Russell would change everything from that

point on.”

The work Thomas submitted was his first

major Russell painting, Charlie Russell and His

Characters. The work depicted a group of men

and one woman in a saloon admiring Russell’s

newest painting that has been propped up on

Andy Thomas, Russell Paints a Masterpiece, 2012, oil on linen, 34 x 48"