Cowboy artist Tim Cox has managed to rise from a dingy ranch hand’s shack in Arizona, where he painted without electricity, to thriving as a celebrated artist on his own ranch in New Mexico. At an exhibition last month, he was honored for a lifetime of achievement.
Still, 67-year-old Cox continues to hone the craft of cowboying whenever he’s not painting modern Western scenes, mingling with art lovers, or savoring time with grandkids and family.
“I always feel like I need to fill the position of a cowboy if I’m on a ranch,” Cox told The Epoch Times.
He explained that when he has visited neighboring ranches in the past, he always brought his own horses so he wouldn’t impose on the ranch owners by borrowing theirs. Arriving to photograph subject matter to paint from, he finds his trips are often fruitless, because he is too busy cowboying and ends up “herding a bunch of cows in, looking at their hind ends.”
Over the decades, Cox’s career rose from roping cattle at the tender age of 8 on a remote ranch near Duncan, Arizona, then catapulted him into the milieu of galleries and Western art collectors. His relentless drive to express modern cowboy life authentically comes through in the meticulous details of his highly-polished realist oil paintings: cowboys notice the subtlest poise of a horse’s ear, look in its eye, or limp in its gait.
"Between Heaven and Earth" by Tim Cox. Courtesy of TimCox.com
Cox shone as a student at school. Around age 14, he was arriving in his ’58 Chevy, toting his rifle and live animals like coyotes or bobcats, which he trapped for furs for extra money. He was always drawing in class, and teachers soon started noticing his talent and begged his parents to find him an art teacher.
“I sold my first painting to my 8th-grade teacher when I was 12 years old,” he said.
The search for an art teacher to match the young artist ended in a drug store in Duncan, where soda pop flowed from a fountain and pre-made hamburgers were reheated in an oven. Cox would show up with his pals for milkshakes and watch the pharmacist, Hal Empie, loosely paint Western landscapes in oils.
“He taught me how to prepare a Masonite board with gesso on it,” Cox said.
"Heading For Camp" by Tim Cox. Courtesy of TimCox.com
Empie did more than that; he also helped connect Cox with accomplished Polish portrait painter Frederic Taubes, who later achieved notable success in New York, and other teachers such as H. T. Clothier.
At age 17, Cox was signed to his first gallery and already living off his paintings—scrounging to make ends meet at first. He married the love of his life, Suzie, found free board in an isolated ranch hand’s house without power where “nobody else would live,” and hunted deer for meat.
A cowboy by day, Cox painted by night.
“I'd go in the bathroom, which had white walls, and hang two Coleman lanterns up, one on each side of my head,“ he said. ”The light wasn’t the best, but that’s how I'd have to work.” He churned out 10 or 12 paintings a year.
"Another Day Gone Forever" by Tim Cox. Courtesy of TimCox.com
Talented, hearty, and living the cowboy life, Cox wasn’t necessarily cultured. A mentor named Candice Bender helped with that by taking him under her wing, along with other Western artists, and instructed them on how to mingle in the more refined art world. Meanwhile, Suzie supplemented his earnings by selling prints and calendars, and within a few years, they were able to afford a ranch of their own.
Asked why they decided to move, Cox answered: “kids.”
Where they'd lived in Arizona ”the nearest telephone was an hour and a half away,“ he said. ”Where we did most of our shopping was two and a half hours away.”
The kids had attended a one-room schoolhouse. “We needed someplace else for them to go to school,” he added. “Then the painting business got better, so it didn’t take us long to pay the [ranch] off.”
"Crossing the Creek" by Tim Cox. Courtesy of TimCox.com
Over the years, Cox honed his painting skills by applying cowboy sensibilities. The cowboys he remembers were always impressed by finely detailed paintings, and for Cox, depicting truth in nature—like how windmills tell how freely the wind blows—became his escape and muse.
His paintings, available at Tim Cox Western Paintings & Fine Art, are famous for their big skies and towering, sometimes ominous clouds. He follows the time-honored oil technique of massing-in large blocks of color over a drawing before layering fine detail on top. This demands his full concentration, and takes its toll on materials, too.
“I will go through probably 30 brushes or more on a painting,“ he said, ”little, fine brushes.”
“I always thought I'd get faster, the more I learned,” Cox said, which to his surprise, proved false. “The more I learned, the less I can slip by.“ He adds that, if anything, it takes longer to finish a painting now than in past years because of how demanding he’s become. His latest picture, ”Taking Them to Water,” displays a quieter tonal contrast than his earlier works but betrays his meticulousness. The equestrian cowboy scene soothes the eye and heart.
In January, Cox’s career of over five decades was honored at the Heart of the West Gala, hosted by the Desert Caballeros Western Museum in Wickenburg, Arizona. He received the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award at an exhibition that featured dozens of Cox originals, old and new.
Cox has also won numerous other awards over the years, including the 2003 Prix de West Award. He became a member of the prestigious Cowboy Artists of America in 2007, served as president at different times, and is now an emeritus member of the organization.
Speaking of his inspirations, Cox turns to the past, and future.
Looking back, the famous Western artist Bill Owen, who originally helped Cox set up his color palette system, was one of his biggest heroes in painting.
“He became a really, really close friend,” said Cox. “If you looked up ‘cowboy artist,’ they should have his picture and story there to describe what a cowboy artist is.”
Owen died of a “massive heart attack” on a ranch in 2013, doing what he loved, Cox said. “It’s a good way to go.”
"Glorious Freedom" by Tim Cox. Courtesy of TimCox.com
Looking forward, the artists notes the cowboy gene lives on in the Cox family tree. A painting A painting from 2020 shown in the gala features his teenage granddaughter C.J., who he says has “been riding horses since she was in diapers.“ Titled ”Glorious Freedom,“ it expresses her emotions just after the COVID lockdowns were lifted. She rides like the wind, with one of those ”once-in-your-life” sunsets as a backdrop.
The artist unpacked its story further by echoing another Cox matron, his granny Stella Blevins Cox: “She said the most she felt like a cowgirl and the most she ever felt free was riding a horse at full gallop.”
Michael Wing is a writer and editor based in Calgary, Canada, where he was born and educated in the arts. He writes mainly on culture, human interest, and trending news.
