Joe Beeler

A native of Missouri, Joe Beeler was born in the town of Joplin. He received a bachelor of fine arts from University of Tulsa in Oklahoma and then went on to study at Art Center School in Los Angeles. Returning to Oklahoma, he worked as an illustrator and also began painting cowboys and Native Americans, and exhibited his first one-man show at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa in 1959. Beeler’s work was strongly influenced by Frederic Remington and Charles Russell, and in 1965 he began working in bronze. That same year he cofounded the Cowboy Artists of America with fellow western artists Charlie Dye and John Hampton. Beeler lived the rest of his life in Arizona and won numerous awards for his western American artworks.