Born in 1949 in Gainesville, Texas and raised on a 900-acre farming and ranching operation in Sivells Bend, Donna Howell-Sickles has always been close to nature and the land around her. In 1972, she earned her BFA at Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas and embarked on a career in Western art.
Donna Howell-Sickles has taken the image and idea of the Cowgirl beyond charcoal lines and into reality. In the Western art genre, she has been exploring the layers beneath the Cowgirl’s engaging exterior for more than 40 years. Donna, herself, identifies with the self-reliant and hard-working spirit of the Cowgirl. In 2007, she was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame by the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas. Donna’s work is a part of the art collections of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, the Booth Western Art Museum, the Tucson Museum of Fine Art, Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West, the C.M. Russell Museum, Museum of Western Art, and the National Museum of Wildlife Art.
In 2011, Donna Howell-Sickles was voted one of the “40 Most Prominent People in the Western Art World” by Southwest Art Magazine. She was President of American Women Artists from 2000 to 2003, and an honored guest artist at both the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana.
Donna’s work has been in numerous exhibitions, both solo and group, and featured in multiple publications over the span of her forty-year career. In 2019, she was chosen as the singular artist to create the artwork featured as the collectible poster for the Pendleton Roundup in Pendleton, Oregon. The Pendleton Roundup is the most iconic rodeo in the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association. The Rodeo began in 1916 with a featured artist each year, chosen for their proven history of authentically embodying the spirit of the western heritage in their work. Donna is the first woman artist to be selected for the honor of creating the poster artwork, and 2019’s poster was the first that prominently showcased all the glory a Cowgirl brings with her.
Donna Howell Sickles’ work is represented by Broadmoor Galleries, Colorado Springs, CO, Big Horn Galleries in Cody, WY and Tubac, AZ, McLarry Fine Art in Santa Fe, NM, Ann Korologos Gallery in Basalt, CO, and at home in Davis & Blevins Gallery, Saint Jo, TX.
