From Pencil to Palette
CA member Wayne Baize embodies what it means to be both a cowboy and an artist. He was raised in rural Texas on a stock farm surrounded by cattle, horses and beautiful countryside. From an early age he began drawing what he saw around him, captivated by the working cowboy and his mount.

“I began taking private art lessons when I was 12,” says Baize, “and I continued to take them during high school.” During his youth, he set up a table in Luskeys Western Store in Abilene where he would do customer portraits. “I just stuck with it,” he says. “I didn’t know you could make a living that way.”

With his family’s support, he continued to draw. He collected magazines and calendars that featured Western American art, and he became familiar with the art of CA member Tom Ryan. One day, he and his brother were at a stock show in Ft. Worth when his brother saw Ryan across the way. “I got up the nerve to go introduce myself,” remembers Baize, “and Mr. Ryan invited me to bring my work to his place for him to see it.”

That day, a relationship that has lasted for decades began. Ryan became Baize’s mentor, and the pair got together often so Ryan could share his experience with the young artist. “He could have torn my paintings to pieces,” remembers Baize, “but he always left me with some ray of hope.”

It was Ryan who encouraged his young protégé to move from pencil drawings to colored pencils, and ultimately to painting with oil, for which he would become known. “He told me that after I had done one or two hundred oil paintings, I might begin to learn something,” chuckles Baize. Ryan also urged him to paint plein air to further enhance his skills. “If you just paint from photos, they lie to you about color and values – they become lumped together,” explains Baize. “When you paint plein air, it teaches you how light changes color and you learn so much faster.”

Ryan also introduced Baize to the CAA in 1969, and he began attending the annual show where he got to know many of its members. Years later, when Baize was invited to join the CAA, Ryan was the first one he called to tell the news. “He helped me all the way,” Baize asserts. “He has always been an inspiration.”

Today, Baize is motivated by his picturesque surroundings and the Western way of life at home in Texas. While he has his own cattle and horses, he also visits nearby ranches – and leaves with ideas and compositions for new paintings. His goal is much the same as it was when he was younger: “I just want to continue to improve as an artist,” he says, “and to come up with new ideas and present them in a way that represents the cowboy in his true light and in a manner he would be proud of.”

~written by Julie Wilson, JFW Communications