One of the first words out of Western artist Donna Howell-Sickles’ mouth was horse. Now she spends her days capturing their grace — along with many other Western symbols she pulls inspiration from — with her stunning artwork.
It’s a lively crowd in this second-floor studio overlooking the town square in Saint Jo, Texas. Eight tall windows illuminate works-in-progress filled with cowgirls jumping, dancing, roping, Roman riding, and kicking up their spur-clad boots amid tawny dogs, ivory bulls, solemn bears, stags, and salmon. The cowgirls, mythic in size, are dressed in batwing chaps, crimson bandanas, fringed gloves, and showy snow-white blouses of the Wild West postcards of the mid-20th century.
“The luxury of this kind of space is a blessing,” says artist Donna Howell-Sickles, owner of the studio and the Davis & Blevins Main Street Gallery on the ground floor of the 1870s building. There is order among her seven easels, she points out: Works on paper are arrayed on the east side; those on canvas on the west side of the 50-by-70-foot room. “It is big enough to hop my ADD self from canvas to canvas. If I reach a sticky point, I turn around and work on something else until I can turn around back to it.”
Careful, I Keep What I Catch, 2024. 30 x 30 inches, acrylic on canvas with charcoal underdrawing.
Howell-Sickles is famed for her focus on the “wonderful, loving, strong, active women I grew up with in farming and ranching.” She was voted one of the 40 most-prominent people in Western art by Southwest Art Magazine and served as president of American Women Artists. Along with cowgirls, horses are at the heart of her work, which is exhibited in museums and galleries from Cody, Wyoming, to Great Falls, Montana, to the National Cowgirl Museum & Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas.
“The whole concept of riding outdoors on top of enormous animals is so compelling,” she says. “Horses are associated with the idea of being wild and free, and women feel constrained and need exposure to those concepts from an early age. Horses have an elegance about them — the way they move and the way the light bounces around their bodies. They are fascinating animals. They have such presence and add liveliness to any drawing, as well as intellectual interest. It’s as if they want to tell you something. People are blessed by their horses.
Horse, she says, was one of her first words, after Mama. “I was really attracted to horses even from a young age,” she recalls. “When I was 3, I went out the front gate to Dad’s horse and tried to get on, and he kicked me. When Daddy came running out, I was lying across the road with a big gash on my forehead; they thought I was dead. We lived 23 miles out of town on a gravel road. I survived, but it changed their way of taking care of me, and Mother was way more protective.”
Building Blocks, 2022. 44 x 33 inches, mixed media on paper.
On the family’s ranch she and her dog — a huge red heeler — spend time walking, “and I recharge my battery with yoga, kayaking, and gardening, although our ranch is mostly rock. I find these very inspiring, and they kind of clear your head.”
She collects art from people she knows, and she confesses to one weakness: boots. “I have about 20 pairs.”
She also tends the plants in the town square. “Small towns need all their people all the time, and I try to be a responsible citizen,” she says. “I do a lot of volunteer work with the Chamber of Commerce and historic society.”
Howell-Sickles’ roots are deep as the village (the 2020 population was 881), which is named for her teetotaling great-uncle, its founder. Family and friends are a large part of her life, and she works with her daughter, Katie Sickles Rust, a graphic designer and photographer, and spends time with Katie’s family.
A Red Barn Morning, 2024. 44 x 30 inches, mixed media on paper with charcoal underdrawing.
Bold, bright, and joyous as they are, her works are multilayered and can also be viewed with an eye to Celtic, Egyptian, Nordic, and other mythologies. Accompanying her cowgirls are hieroglyphs from the world of the spirit and symbols of truth, knowledge, creation, female energy, and wisdom.
“I never took a mythology class in college or elsewhere, but I have always been interested in mythologies and in comparative religion,” she says. “I think that the symbols we see in religious thought are interesting and speak to all of us, and I find more of the religious feminine in mythology. A lot of people find the symbology element to my work, but you can appreciate the image on just a Western level. You don’t need to know about the other stuff that’s back there for it to be a good painting. As an artist, I need all that other information. I need those bits and pieces of past stories to show the strength of woman inside her community.”
West of Here, 2021. 60 x 40 inches, charcoal on paper.
Donna Howell-Sickles is represented by McLarry Fine Art in Santa Fe; Ann Korologos Gallery in Basalt, Colorado; Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, Arizona; and Davis & Blevins Gallery in Saint Jo, Texas. Visit the artist at donnahowellsickles.com.
From our August/September 2025 issue.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy of the artist