Mixed media & collage on canvas
40 H x 30 W x 2 D inches
2026
Original work. Signed and dated. Ships directly from the studio.
Bill Pickett was inspired by the complicated relationship between recognition and erasure within the mythology of the American West. Pickett became one of the most celebrated Black cowboys of his era, developing the rodeo technique known as bulldogging and performing internationally, yet his presence remains far less familiar than the fictionalized cowboys who came to define the West in popular culture.
Through layered paint, collage, fragmentation, and abrasion, I wanted the surface to feel as though Pickett’s image has been recovered from a larger history that has partially obscured him. The portrait exists somewhere between documentation and myth, asking who is remembered, who becomes an icon, and who is left at the edges of the stories we inherit.
Mixed media & collage on canvas
40 H x 30 W x 2 D inches
2026
Original work. Signed and dated. Ships directly from the studio.
Bill Pickett was inspired by the complicated relationship between recognition and erasure within the mythology of the American West. Pickett became one of the most celebrated Black cowboys of his era, developing the rodeo technique known as bulldogging and performing internationally, yet his presence remains far less familiar than the fictionalized cowboys who came to define the West in popular culture.
Through layered paint, collage, fragmentation, and abrasion, I wanted the surface to feel as though Pickett’s image has been recovered from a larger history that has partially obscured him. The portrait exists somewhere between documentation and myth, asking who is remembered, who becomes an icon, and who is left at the edges of the stories we inherit.
