Bill Anton was born in Chicago in 1957, and later moved to Prescott, Arizona, where he enjoys painting outside from real life. He loves the American west, the Sierra Nevada, Sangre de Cristo, Sawatch and a hundred other ranges of our rocky mountains were the only “Big Shoulders” of interest to the artist. Walking thunderstorms, sunstruck cedars, rimrock and artfully abstract water patterns charge the landscape with impossible beauty enabling the artist to capture the drama of the atmosphere and the mystery of a western night with his calligraphic brushstroke style.  

While his subject matter is primarily about the American West and Cowboys, he does not see himself as a biographer of such, recording history on the ranches as life there is today, but rather as an artist recording how he feels about the west as he expresses it through mood and passion.  

Bill Antons' paintings enables the viewer to feel the drama of the atmosphere and the mystery of a western night. The volume and portent of a cloud is evident in the calligraphy of his brushstrokes and the pack of muscle below a horse’s shoulder are energized by a gestural application of paint. 

“Amidst this nobility is its caretaker: the rancher. With the natural ease of generations bred to the saddle, he is a powerful image further ennobled by a fine horse. An artist under the spell of the west has the privilege of marshalling the virtues of landscape, figure andequine painting into one supremely paintable subject: the American cowboy.”