Popart Cowboy

Harlan D. Whatley was born in Louisiana and grew up in the Lone Star State in Austin and Dallas. When I was in the first grade in Dallas, I played a chap-wearing cowboy in my school play, The Big Show. Armed with a Wild Wild West TV show lunch box, a "64 brilliant colors box "of Crayola crayons and a red Big Chief Writing Tablet, I colored my way into the cowboy culture. Today, the American cowboy icon is alive and well in popular culture.

I mostly create drawings with colored and graphite pencils on paper as well as acrylics and oils on canvas, metal and pizza boxes. Also, I like to experiment with bricolage and pointillism. Each idea manifests in its own individual style and it's rare that my portraits are photorealistic. I create abstract acrylic paintings on canvas. My art has been shown and sold all over Texas in galleries and museums. 

My work references the Pop language of Western cinema and television as source material for colored-pencil drawings and acrylic paintings. This Western subculture medium represents a modern mythology that brings larger-than-life subject matter into the predictability of our everyday life and elevates icons of the West.

MFA Hunter College/CUNY

MA The University of Texas - Permian Basin

BA College of Charleston