Veloy Vigil Art Prints of Horses and Western Scenes

Veloy Vigil, an abstract-expressionist painter of American Indian figures working in both watercolor and acrylic, was born in Denver, Colorado in 1931. Decended from a great-grandmother who was a Pueblo Indian and a great-grandfather who was Spanish, Veloy was raised on a farm in Greeley, CO. After high school, he tried the rodeos and joined the Marines. After he was discharged from the Marines, he says, "I had no direction. In fact, I thought I was going to become a farmer. But when I asked myself what I really wanted to do, it was to draw and paint and create art. I then looked up an art school." He attended the Colorado Institute of the Arts by day and Denver Art Academy by night. In 1958, he was employed as a commercial artist in Cleveland, in 1964 he moved to Colorado Springs as an illustrator, and in 1966 he worked as an art director in California. Meanwhile, he was developing his watercolor technique and exhibiting in shows. From commercial design where"there was no place for a guy like myself who wanted to do art," he was finally able to paint full time, which was "a natural transition because I had been working on it for years." His approach to watercolor was to "think masses from the time I grab the sponge and wet down the paper. I begin to break up the shapes and masses in my mind when I'm laying the color down. I develop the negative and positive shapes, and I frequently paint to music." Vigil was listed in "Who's Who in American Art" and was a member of the National Watercolor Society. His works are in public and private collections throughout the world, including the Heard Museum in Phoenix and the Sir Andrew Grimwade collection in Melbourne, Australia. His awards include the Winslow Homer Memorial Award from the Springfield Art Musum, the All City Outdoor Art Festival Award from the Los Angeles Municipal Art Galleries, the Avery Memorial Award from the Heard Museum, and he was inducted into the Colorado Institute of Art's Alumni Hall of Fame in 1993. He was a resident of Taos, New Mexico until his death in 1997.