Curtis Zabel Contemporary Western Artists Born in Athol, Kansas, Curtis Zabel moved to the Elk River Valley near Steamboat Springs, Colorado when he was two years old, and grew up around work teams, cattle horses and abundant wildlife in the surrounding mountains. He was a prolific artist from earliest childhood, and a prize winning painter by the time he graduated from high school. He was gaining stature as a painter in the mid-1960's, when a friend sent him some beeswax to sculpt with, and Zabel immediately became hooked. His first bronze of a cowboy on a horse sold out the edition of 10 within two weeks, much to the artist's amazement, and set a precedence for many of his editions over the next 20 years. Zabel's discovery of this tactile new medium allowed his so much greater expression in translating his life into art, he embraced with an enthusiasm that remains undimmed today. Knowledge of his subject matter -- from wildlife to horses, to cattle to working cowboys -- is so thorough, Zabel translates it into subtle and sometimes humorous detail. "I want my sculpture to look alive, to be convincing in its movement. And I like to put in bits of humor, which I find even in the sad parts of life." There is an urgency to Zabel's passion for his subject matter, a growing realization that with the double threat of development and rising costs of running a ranch, his may indeed be a vanishing lifestyle, a way of life soon to pass as surely as that of the 19th Century cowboy. But what is certain in Zabel's mind is that it won't be forgotten, the truth of the ranching life as he has lived it captured convincingly in bronze. Four-Legged Commissary The Big Drift Caribou Flying Tails Non-Typical Muley Turnin' the Crank Up the Creek Shining Armour High Plains Buckaroo

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