This page is for journalists, writers, collectors and gallery managers who would like to know more about Sherry Bryant. It is a more detailed biography.



Sherry believed she was not human.

During her early years, she galloped on all fours around the house and the garden, whinnying, eating grass and dirt. She hooked herself up to the tongue of her little red wagon and pulled other children around the block. To make the sound of hooves, she wrapped her fingers around big bones from her mother's roasts, clip-clopped on the sidewalk, and made dirt tracks in the garden.

She loved horses, and believed she was one.

Her first easel
According to a notation Sherry's mother made in her baby book when she was two, Sherry loved to draw, and listen to classical music. And her pictures were always of horses. She received her first easel one Christmas when she was six-years-old. In a candid photo, you can see her wearing her Dr. Denton pajamas and sporting a big smile on her face. The first thing she drew was-what else?-a horse.

"I am myself"
An argument she had with her mother was about being alive. Her mother casually mentioned that Sherry was alive, but the child insisted that "I am not. I am myself, but I am not alive."

She changed her decision once she discovered that horses were alive, and if she were a horse, she must be alive, too. It was a big concession for a little girl.

At the age of ten, she discovered she could make more headway on two feet, and when she stood up, it made painting at her easel a lot easier.

She had a brief period when she decided to be a fashion designer and drew women's figures wearing dresses with coordinating shoes, hats, and jewelry. After she'd drawn and painted a large number, she folded the pages into a book, and then turned back to her first love, horses.

In grade school, her teacher drew a horse and told the children to color it. Sherry hated the drawing because the teacher got the anatomy wrong. Sherry colored her picture red. Nevertheless, she became the class artist all the way through high school and was often called upon to draw wildlife.

Horses were her language
Horses were her language. She studied the anatomy, and would refuse to play with a toy horse that was not anatomically correct. Horses were a big part of her life. She took pony rides, rode neighbors' horses, and collected horse hairs. She taped them to paper, wrote a description under them, and then drew the horses.

She kissed her horse
Born in San Diego, Sherry was a Navy brat, and her family moved around the United States frequently. But that didn't stop her at the age of fifteen from buying a nine-year-old cow pony, a pinto-Arabian mix, she named Misty. She and Misty were inseparable, and she much preferred riding her horse to going out with boys. She told her troubles to the horse, which always flipped its ears and appeared to listen without being judgmental. We'll never know for sure what the horse thought, but Sherry says, "I could always kiss my horse, and all it wanted was hay."

While out riding, Sherry observed lots of wildlife-cows, rabbits, prairie dogs, coyotes, snakes, and birds. Fascinated by how they are built, she studied their movement and anatomy, and supplemented her curiosity by going to the zoo and sitting for hours in front of animals like lions, tigers, elephants, and giraffes, sketching and talking to them.

Ranching
At eighteen, she became an alfalfa rancher for six years, and came into contact with many wild animals from bats to mice to coyotes. This experience reinforced her love of wildlife, and she continued to paint and draw them.

In her late twenties, Sherry expanded her vision into other living things and painted wildflowers, trees, domestic cats, sheep, cows, and hawks. Before then, most of her work had been in pencil drawing, pastels and oils. In her thirties, she began watercolor painting.

Drawing and painting-a passion
Drawing and painting animals became a passion for her. If she found an animal dead in the road, she'd take it home, freeze it, and examine its anatomy. When her mother visited, she never knew what she'd find in the freezer, and when looking for something for dinner sometimes discovered frozen ferrets, acorn woodpeckers, kestrels, owls and snakes.

At one point, Sherry visited a horse graveyard on a ranch in California, and took a full skeleton home to study. She bleached its bones and then drew it.

Sherry always revered animals, and after she drew them, she buried them in a sacred spot, and thanked them for being, even in death, part of her life.

She broadened her animal studies by traveling throughout the United States, and by visiting areas of Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Tonga Tapu, and Samoa.

Elizabethan card series-pen and ink/watercolor
Upon returning to the United States, she joined the Renaissance Faire for one year, and became part of Elizabethan England. Her sister designed and made her costume, and Sherry made the booth tent, learned to speak Elizabethan English, and drew several themes in pen and ink which were then printed on parchment cards. She hand-painted each card with watercolors and offered them for sale at the festival. Themes such as: flowers, vegetables and animals depicted by primroses, naked ladies, radishes, sheep, unicorns, dragons, a jousting horse, a lion and a falcon wearing a hood, bell and leather straps.

Wolf limited edition and card series-pen and ink/watercolor
In 1990, Sherry spent three days in a pen with two arctic wolves, talking to them, studying their anatomy and habits, and drawing them. Following that, she attended a Wolf Rendezvous in Kingman, AZ, where she observed 120 wolves and their owners, attended lectures, communicated with the wolves, and imagined herself a wolf.

To capture an animal's essence, Sherry thinks of herself as the animal and becomes it, much like she did with horses as a child. As a result, she produced an endangered species series in limited edition 11x14 paintings, and cards, including wolves, whooping cranes, white and brown buffalos and brown pelicans. She sold many of her creations at the YES Store in Santa Barbara, CA, (a 7-week show) for five years in a row, and at other shows.

Sherry's western odyssey
Ever ready to broaden her understanding of animals, in 1993 she embarked on an odyssey, visiting western US wilderness areas to see animals in their natural habitat. Living in her van alone, she sketched the creatures she met. She visited a buffalo ranch in Montana, and learned how strong, tough, rugged and untrainable they are. On the same ranch, she observed Elk. On a horse named Jet, she herded cattle beside cowboys during a cattle drive in North Dakota. Again in Montana, she rode along the Continental Divide with friends and observed and sketched for future paintings animals such as bob cats, deer, skunks, foxes, coyotes, rattle snakes and gopher snakes, king snakes, and birds of the west like crows, eagles, hawks and owls.

She met a taxidermist, observed how he went about his craft, and she drew the animals he worked on. In Death Valley, she encountered the unexpected-a wetlands with ducks, geese and birds, and was accosted by a wild black stallion who charged out of nowhere, whinnied, reared up on his hind legs, slashed the air, and then ran off, and disappeared like a phantom. Just letting her know he was there, but long enough for her to get a good look at him and draw him. In Tombstone, AZ, she met up with more cowboys, who still lived the life of a century ago, and there she sketched horses and burros.

Patagonia, Arizona
Having fallen in love with the southwest, Sherry then moved to Patagonia, AZ, birding capitol of America, seventy-five miles south of Tucson, and encountered javelinas that decided to live under her house, and coati mundi that played in a tree outside her window. Before long, she moved to a working cattle ranch overlooking the San Rafael Valley. From her kitchen window, she could see mountains in Mexico. And for the next five years, she lived in a hundred year old house on 15,000 acres with barely a person around, and painted every day from sunup to sundown. Her subjects were wildlife, and horses, cows, and bulls, and her mediums were watercolor and acrylics. After adopting two calves, nurturing them, brushing and hugging and kissing them, and taking them for walks, she became a vegetarian. They are still her pets and continue to live on a ranch, free, cared for, and happy.

The Mesquite Grove Art Gallery in Patagonia has represented her work in that area for more than ten years.

Master Class
Self-taught, Sherry was chosen to participate in a Master Class of only twelve professional artists. The program, run by instructor and artist Charlie Burger, lasted three years and offered an intensive one-on-one personal study of creativity and fundamental principles of art. Sherry emerged from the course with a strong focus and burgeoning ideas.

Cat watercolor series
Sherry is a full-time artist who earns her living from her art. In 1999, she moved to Tucson, and lives at the end of a country road adjacent to the Saguaro National Park West among tall saguaros, teddy bear cholla, opuntia cactus, and chaparral. She lives here with her five cats, two dogs, three love birds, and a writer, who is not furry, has two legs instead of four, and has no feathers, but is surprisingly still acceptable. Based on her own pets, she produced a series of watercolor cats and dogs.

Spirit animals of the southwest-watercolors, monotypes
Today, Sherry observes from her studio window the creatures she honors-javelinas, skunks, tortoises, box turtles, snakes, scorpions, cottontails, jack rabbits, and ground squirrels. Birds drink and bathe in her bird bath and feed on the food she leaves them. Birds such as ravens, hawks, owls, woodpeckers, thrashers, hooded orioles, cardinals, cactus wrens and pyrrhuloxia. On occasion, bobcats and coyotes press their noses against the studio's picture window and stare in at her standing at her easel as she stares back at them. A black coachwhip snake lives in her studio, as does a scorpion, and, as with the other animals, enjoy an easy coexistence and respect.

Capturing their essence
Sherry paints animals of the southwest for her spirit-animals series, and with this series she feels she has realized what she was born to do from the moment she drew her first horse. In watercolors and monotypes, she captures their essence using her easily recognizable style, which is neither photo-realistic nor abstract, but romantic in nature, and heartfelt, uplifting, inspiring, and loving in character. Many collectors feel her work is more real than realistic. Others have commented that sometimes her work looks like it has been airbrushed, but none of it is. Sherry does everything by hand with a brush.

She captures a creature's essence when she paints its eyes, which are alive, sometimes piercing, appearing to look right into your heart, sometimes wary, inviting you to come closer, but not too close. After all, they are mostly wild.

Her animals are approachable
Overall, her animals are approachable, wise, and soulful. Sherry's reverence shines through their eyes and demeanor. They seem to be in the middle of something when Sherry's paintings capture them, as if the animals are about to run or hide or jump or watch. Her paintings are mostly portraits, close-ups, filling the picture with their spirit, strength and courage.

Seeing the being, not the physical
In this way, the paintings are visionary, seeing beyond the common perception of the creature. They are transcendent, not seeing the physical, but the being. Her paintings give the viewer a mystical insight into divine nature, nourishing the viewer's soul as well as the eyes, exposing the animal's invisible life force, enlightening us, comforting us, allowing us to see the natural world in a state of spiritual grace and ethereal harmony.

Art shows
Around 1980, Sherry joined the Santa Ynez Valley (California) Art Association, and sold paintings through them. And by exhibiting at many shows throughout California, she has sold her work consistently for the past twenty-five years.

She still recalls with satisfaction her first sale for the association, a pastel of a black-faced Suffolk sheep she had sketched many times.

Sherry has exhibited her work at the Mesquite Grove Gallery for more than ten years, the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum Fiesta Show, the Mountain Oyster Contemporary Western Art Show, Tubac Center for the Arts, St. David's Monastery Art Show, Spirit Weavers, Superstition Mountain Cat Show, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History Ethnic Art Show, Santa Barbara Mission Festival Fourth of July Art Show, San Francisco New Age Festival, San Diego Whole Earth Expo, Santa Ynez Valley Art Association shows, YES Store Gallery Christmas Art Show (for five years), the Southern California Renaissance Faire, and others.

Sherry recently won an award at the Stone Gallery Watercolor Guild Show for her depiction of a raven named Fabio, and is a member of the Southern Arizona Watercolor Guild (SAWG).

More information
Please see Sherry's Biography for more information.

How to collect Sherry's work
People such as singer Linda Ronstadt, world traveler Margaret Fleetwood, art gallery owner Regina Medley and realtor Susan Belt have collected Sherry's work, and her wolf paintings were featured in "Dream Network," A Quarterly Journal Exploring Dreams & Myth, Vol. 12, No. 2. Many of Sherry's original spirit-animal series watercolor and one-of-a kind monotypes displayed on this web site are available at art galleries. High-quality giclée prints, fine art prints and notecards are available through the Sherry Bryant Studio.

To find out where a specific original painting may still be available, please contact us by email, telephone, fax or mail.

For commissions, please contact Sherry directly by emailing or phoning Roscoe, the studio office manager.

Upcoming one-woman show
Sherry's Spirit Animals of the Southwest series will be featured in a one-woman show at the prestigious Tucson Botanical Gardens for the entire month of April 2007. Please click on Upcoming Shows for more details.

The Sherry Bryant Studio
PO Box 399
Cortaro, AZ 85652

Phone: (520) 616-7643
Toll-free in the United States: (888) 436-1402
Fax: (520) 616-7519
Email: Roscoe@SherryBryant.com
Web sites: www.SherryBryant.com & www.spiritanimalsofthesouthwest.com

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