Bill Anton

BILL ANTON WESTERN PICTURES
Western Art Prints

Bill Anton was born in Chicago in 1957 and later moved to Prescott, Arizona. He graduated from Northern Arizona University. Later, after committing to painting full-time, he studied under Michael Lynch and Ned Jacob, who encouraged him to paint from life. “While the nature of my work necessitates much studio time, more and more of my painting is done outside.”

Bill Anton’s work has been published in Southwest Art, Architectural Digest, Art of the West, Equine Images, Western Horseman and Art-Talk. Corporate collections that include his work are Sears, Dupont, State Farm Insurance, Bank of America, Hewlett Packard, and Trust Company of the West.

Biography continued below...

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BILL ANTON

Warming Up		 BILL ANTON

Twilight at Cottonwood Camp		 Cowboy Horses picture Bill Antons Golden Lakes Trail
Golden Lakes Trail

Golden Dawn		 BILL ANTON Western Cowboy pictures Off the Rimrock
Off the Rimrock
Emerald Oasis

Arroyo Respite
Cottonwood Dreams		 Bill Anton Though the Road May be Long Cowboy western pictures art prints
Though the Road May Be Long
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Bill Anton is an "artist's artist". His bold brushwork and sophisticated use of light have brought his work to the forefront of Western art. "Warming Up" is a dramatic and beautiful painting that made it's mark at auction in early 2008. The cool colors in the foreground contrast with the warm colors throughout the upper half of the painting giving the viewer the exact feeling of the riders as the sun rises warming up the snowy landscape.  Arizona artist Bill Anton is very highly respected in the Western art community.

His award winning work has been displayed at the Prix de West at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Masters of the American West at The Autry Museum, The National Center for American Western Art, the Old West Museum, and The National Museum of Wildlife Art. In addition, his work is in the permanent collection of the prestigious Gilcrease Museum.

“I do not see myself as a biographer of the cowboy. I know some artists feel they are recording history on the ranches as life there is today, but the focus of my work has always been mood and passion. If I’m recording anything, I’m recording how I feel about the west. I want the viewer to feel the drama of atmosphere and the mystery of a western night. I want the volume and portent of a cloud to be evident in the calligraphy of a brushstroke. The pack of muscle below a horse’s shoulder should be energized by a gestrual application of paint.

“You see, I love to paint. And I love the American west. I was born in Chicago, but the Sierra Nevada, Sangre de Cristo, Sawatch and a hundred other ranges of our rocky mountains were the only “Big Shoulders” I was ever interested in. Walking thunderstorms, sunstruck cedars, rimrock and artfully abstract water patterns charge the landscape with impossible beauty.

“Amidst this nobility is its caretaker: the rancher. With the natural ease of generations bred to the saddle, he is a powerful image further ennobled by a fine horse. An artist under the spell of the west has the privilege of marshalling the virtues of landscape, figure and equine painting into one supremely paintable subject: the American cowboy.”

- Bill Anton