Featured Artist
Don Weller
As a boy, Don Weller drew horses and cowboys when he wasn’t exploring with his horse along the Palouse River or over the rolling hills that surrounded his childhood home near Pullman, Washington. He roped calves in high school and college rodeos and sold some cartoons to Western Horseman magazine. His passions were horses and art. After graduating from Washington State University with a degree in Fine Art, he sold his horses and moved to Los Angeles where he spent decades doing graphic design and illustration. His work appeared on record covers, posters, in advertisements, and on hundreds of magazine pages. He did covers for Time Magazine, and TV Guide, and illustrated stories in Sports Illustrated, Boys Life, Pro, Readers Digest, and many others. He did posters for the Hollywood Bowl, The National Football League, The Rose Bowl, and the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. He illustrated three children’s books and published a coffee table book about cutting horses, Pride in the Dust. He created five stamps for the United States Post Office.
Besides illustration and graphic design, he taught school part-time for three years at UCLA, where he met his wife Cha Cha, and for eleven years at the Art Center School in Pasadena.
Finally, Don realized he had seen all the cement and palm trees he could stand. They moved to Utah, near the skiing at Park City. A book project for the NCHA introduced him to a neighbor who trained to cut horses. The west of his childhood came flooding back. It was still there, just as he’d left it. The cutting horse book project took him to Texas and Arizona, California, and Montana. He was in arenas and on ranches.
He began to wonder what it would be like to ride those cutting horses. He found out, and his adventures expanded to cutting contests, rodeos, and ranch life.
Now Cha Cha and Don live in rural Oakley, Utah, with Buster the border collie, two cats, and five horses who are bred to cut. Don creates western paintings and rides the cutting horses. In the summers the menagerie grows to include cattle and sometimes buffalo. In winter they ski.
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2017 Cheyenne Frontier Days: "Rodeo Icon" will be reproduced as the official poster for CFD in 2018
2017 American Plains Artists Juried Art Show: 2nd Place Overall for "Comes in Swingin"
2017 American Plains Artists Juried Art Show: Publisher's Award from Art of the West for "Long Shot"
2017 Bosque Art Classic: Silver Medal Water Media Award for "Ropin' with Roanie" 2017 Traces of the West (Eccles Community Center, Ogden, Utah): Best of Show for "Been Workin"
2017 "Hold Your Horses": Featured Artist Phippen Museum
2017 American Plains Artists Signature Show and Sale: Golden Spur Award 2016 "Hold your Horses" : Featured Artist (for 2017), Phippen Museum 2016 One Man Show: Kimball Art Center, Park City, Utah
2016 People's Choice Award: Phippen Museum
2016 Traces of the West: The Best of Painting
2016 Windows to the West: People's Choice Award and Artists' Choice Award 2016 Cattlemen’s Art Show: Featured Artist
2015 The Art of Cutting: Spirit Award
2015 Traveling the West (Largest western art show ever): Best Watercolor 2015 Traces of the West: The Best of Painting
2014 Traces of the West: Two Sponsored Awards
2011 Bosque Conservatory: First Place Watercolor, Patron's Award 2011 American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame and Museum: Steel Dust Award 2011 American Plains Artists: Golden Spur Award (APA Member's Choice), Arrowhead Award (Director's Choice), Second Place (Overall) Award 2011 Western Artists of America: Artists’ Choice Award, Editor’s Choice Award, Third place watercolor
2011 Western Artists Association, National Western Art Show:
Best of Show Water Media
2010 American Plains Artists: Exhibition Award
2010 Art of the Horse: Best of Show
2010 Bosque Conservatory: Second Place watercolor
2009 Bosque Conservatory: Jones Award Winner, Gold Medal watercolor 2009 Fur Feathers & Fins Art Show: Sponsor’s Awad
2009 Paint America: Second 100
2009 Paint America Top 50 Minis (Juror’s Award Winner)
2009 Summit County Historical Art: First Place watercolor, Judge’s Award 2009 Western Spirit Show: Best Watercolor
2008 Bosque Conservatory: Gold Award, New Comer Award, Patron’s Award 2008 Western Spirit Show: Best Watercolor
2007 Bountiful Davis Art Center: Best of Show
2007 Paint the Parks: Top 100
The Howell Gallery | 6432 N. Western Avenue | OKC, OK 73116 | 405-840-4437 | howellgallery.com
2007 Paint the Parks: Top 100 Mini
2007 Western Spirit Show: Best Watercolor
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Bosque Conservatory, Clifton
Bountiful Davis Art Center, Bountiful, Utah
Cattlemen’s Western Art Show, Paso Robles
Cheyenne Frontier Days - Old West Museum, Cheyenne
C.M. Rusell Museum, Great Falls
Empire 100 Western Art Show and Sale, Tucson
Kimball Art Center, Park City
Mountain Oysters Show, Tucson
Pearce Museum, Corsicana, Texas
Peppertree Art Show, Santa Ynez
Settlers West, Tucson
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Western Horseman November 2014 Closing the Circle
Southwest Art August 2014 High in the Saddle
Art of the West March/April 2014 Addicted to Painting
Western Art Collector June 2013 Watercolor Cowboys
Western Art Collector May 2013 World of Watercolor
Watercolor Artist April 2013 American Pictures: Don Weller Southwest Art April 2012 Mixed Media: Don Weller
Ranch & Riata Premier Issue 2011 Painting Cowboys, Don Weller Western Art Collector December 2010 Art of the Cowboy
Art of the West Nov/Dec 2010 Color Magicians: Don Weller and six others Art of the West May/June 2009 Watercolor: Don Weller and four others Sedona Monthly March 2009 Open Portfolio: Don Weller Horses in Art Summer 2008 Unmistakable Watercolors of Don Weller Park City Magazine Summer 2008 The Prettiest Place
Wildlife Art May/June 2007 Horses of a Different Color
Performance Horse April 2007 The Road Home
Southwest Art March 2007 On the Range. 6 Western Artists Celebrate An American Icon, The Working Cowboy
Western Horseman Aug 2005 Western Art Gallery
AD News July/August, 2005 Creative Voice
P.C. Arts Winter/Spring 2004 A Real Life Sketch: Don Weller from Stamps to Stirrups
