Since 1973, the world’s finest Western painters and sculptors have captured cowboy culture for the “Prix de West Invitational Art Exhibition & Sale,” at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. The exhibition recently opened and runs through Aug. 3, 2025.
Every year the Prix de West committee has the arduous task of selecting one piece of exhibition art for the prestigious Prix de West Purchase Award and a place in the museum’s permanent collection.
When announcing the 2024 Prix de West Purchase Award, committee chair Susan J. Roeder explained that they select the best exhibition work, while ensuring it represents the best work that the artist has ever brought to the exhibition. She added: “Since the cowboy museum is all about storytelling, we’re also looking for a work that says something new or says something in a new way that will allow us to expand the story that we tell of the American West throughout history.”
Accomplished illustrator Thomas Blackshear II won the 2024 Prix de West Purchase Award for his oil painting of a former enslaved African American woman, aptly titled “A Much Needed Break.” She sits beside a wagon, reflecting on the long road West and the start of her new, free life.
Blackshear II said in his acceptance speech: “I’ve had some low lows in my career, but I’ve also had some incredible high highs, and this is one of them.”
Award-Winning Storytelling Art
Recent Prix de West Purchase Award winners also reflect the rich and varied storytelling of the West and the vast range of artistic talent in different mediums. In 2023, artist Walter T. Matia’s bronze sculpture “Molly Is a Working Girl” won the award. Matia depicted Molly poised, having just spotted a bird.
Matia’s happy that the judges chose the piece. “It spoke to a part of the West that I don’t think is always acknowledged: the role of the hunter and fisherman in both opening up the West initially but also now conserving the West,” he said in his acceptance speech.
Western still-life painter Kyle Polzin depicted the cargo of a Concord stagecoach for his 2022 Prix de West Purchase Award-winning work. “The double barrel coach gun offers peace of mind to the passengers as they embark into the lawless terrain of the Southwest,” he wrote on Instagram.
Wildlife artist Greg Beecham’s painting “Gone Fishin’,” of a mountain lion thrashing through water in pursuit of its catch, won the 2021 Prix de West Purchase Award. According to his Fine Art America biography, Beecham lives by his motto: “Do all things as unto the Lord, and get so good you can’t be ignored.”
The next artwork to join the museum’s collection and win the Prix de West Purchase Award will be announced on June 21.
