WHY COWGIRLS?

One day while thumbing through an old photograph album, I came across a vintage photo of my mother-in-law at about age 12 sitting astride what she referred to as her "Indian pony." Suddenly she came alive to me again.

Sharon's Mother-in-Law    Bob Hunt's Mother,  Billie Clive Phinney

Silently reliving her stories of her youth traveling all over west Texas riding for a trick roper, I realized that this would be the focus of my work. I was unaware that this focus would become an obsession. An obsession with her and all of the other women like her who have stirred our imaginations to the thrill of the rodeo arena.

Researching archives, reading about their way of life, sometimes in their own words, what drew them to this dangerous and exciting way of like, has fueled my obsession. That road that Vera McGinnis referred to in her autobiography, "Rodeo Road-My Life as a Pioneer Cowgirl."

"My feet were irrevocably pointed down Rodeo Road-the beckoning, relentless road that rodeo hands facetiously call "Suicide Trail."          - Vera McGinnis

My pencil seems driven, pushed by a force from deep inside of me. Perhaps from silent urgings in my Texas heart, and my own desire to be a part, at least in a small way, of that world, the world of the "Wild Bunch": "Those Daring Darlings-Women in Rodeo."