OLEG STAVROWSKY

Born March 6, 1927 in Harlem, New York. I had no interest in any area of art or graphics until my thirtieth year. At that time, I signed on as a technical illustration trainee with McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis. Eventually I drifted into newspaper fashion illustration and then into all areas of commercial illustration. I worked in Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis and Oklahoma City as an illustrator, mostly employed by art studios. Later on I worked strictly as a free-lancer on my own. I got into western art some twenty years ago and have been in it ever since.

My primary areas of interest at this time are twofold; I work with “Mountain Trails Gallery” in Park City, Utah. My only other areas of interest besides western art are exotic Italian cars and radio controlled model aircraft. I’ve been married to the same lady for forty-seven years and we’ve raised eight children. I expect to be doing western art for the rest of my life and at that point in time have ten thousand more paintings I want to do! Tall order! In regards to my commercial art background I still maintain the same routine for doing paintings as I did then. I go out and get the necessary photocopy for whatever I plan to paint. I work only indoors under corrected fluorescent light. I found that authentic western areas and activities such as ranching, riding, rodeo, etc. are absolutely essential to believable paintings…none of this can be “faked”. During the many years, I’ve painted western situations. I’ve had the opportunity to acquire considerable knowledge of my subject matter and an invaluable file cabinet of accumulated photocopies. It is a huge reserve and k draws on it frequently.