Joe Beeler, Western Artist

Award-winning painter and sculptor of cowboy and Indian life as lived in the late 1800s Joe Beeler was extremely popular among western art collectors.

Of Cherokee ancestry, Joe Beeler (1931-2006) was born near the Missouri and Oklahoma border, where as a boy he learned to rope, ride and hunt and participated in war dances at the Quapaw powwow.  As a young man he served in the Korean War, married, and started a family.  As a struggling artist, it was not uncommon for him to put down his paintbrush and go out and shoot a rabbit for the family dinner. 

His family moved to Sedona, Arizona in 1962, where, in 1964, he and two other artists founded the prestigious *Cowboy Artists of America organization.  Their marketing efforts propelled upward the demand and prices for western art.

*The Cowboy Artists of America (CAA) is an exclusive organization of artists that was founded in 1965. It was founded in 1965 by four prominent western artists, Joe Beeler, Charlie Dye, John Hampton and George Phippen, who have all since died. Since its inception, the exclusive organization of artists has always been dedicated to portraying the lifestyles of the cowboy and the American West, both as it was and as it endures. The CAA was founded in 1965 in Sedona, Arizona and held its first art show in 1966 at the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. - Wikipedia