Joe Beeler
1931-2006
Too Close For Comfort
MEDIUM: Oil on board
DIMENSIONS: 22 x 40 inches
Signed/CA lower right
Signed letter from the artist, dated 1976 verso
SHIPPING DIMENSIONS: 34x52
SOLD FOR: $40,950.00
Including Buyers Premium
2023 - APRIL,
LOT 233
Additional Information
Exhibited:
Phippen Museum, Prescott, AZ
American Collector’s Art Auction
Gilcrease Musum, Tulsa, OK
Literature:
Joe Beeler: Life of a Cowboy Artist, Don Hedgpeth, Diamond Tail Press, Vail, CO, 2004: p. 154.
Joe Beeler frequently painted cowboys, and he also repeatedly painted Native American scenes, but many of his best works are when the two worlds overlapped, as is the case in Too Close for Comfort, which shows a horse and rider hiding behind a desert bush as Indian riders march past. “Joe’s creative muse rides a horse called reality,” Don Hedgpeth writes in Joe Beeler: Life of a Cowboy Artist. “The substance and strength of his art is based on blood and birthright. He is heir to the timeless tales and traditions of two groups of proud people. [Joe] says, ‘I can’t remember the first time I drew an Indian or a cowboy on a sheet of tablet paper, but it was along about the same time I was trying to decide whether Santa Claus’s reindeer could really fly, or if they had to walk every step of the way.”