07 April, 2008
- WESTERN ARTWORK By Denny Karchner
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- 39 Comments
"THE LAST OF THE REAL COWBOYS"
Hi everyone.
I started my next painting today. This is another good friend that I met a while back. His name is Gene Hartung. Gene is soon to be 72 years old. Gene lives right across the Buffalo Bill Dam from us. He happen to walk into our store/gallery and Leigh knows exactly who I am on the constant lookout for. She immediately asked him if he would pose for me. He told her how my mentor, James Bama had ask him the same question several years ago. He agreed to pose for him. He took the photos. What a shame, Bama never painted him! "His loss, is my gain."
Last Monday, during a driving snow storm, him and I got together for my photo shoot at his log home. I actually posed him in the exact same clothes Bama did, except for the shirt.
Gene had a favorite saddle as a young cowboy. It was completely wore out and now gone. Since the Bama shoot, Gene had taken up saddle making. He wanted to make an exact copy which he set out to do. He had never made a saddle before. Working totally from memory, he actually made four saddles until he was happy with the forth one. He sold the other three saddles, one went to a buyer in England. He was so proud of his saddle. I had to pose him with it!! What a thing of beauty!!
Here is one of my other photographs of Gene. You can see, it was "putting it down!!"
