To be a cowboy was A. Kelly Pruitt's childhood dream; a dream that he realized early in his life. He started breaking horses when he was twelve and helped bring many a trailherd from Mexico across the Rio Grand at Presidio, Texas where he and his family lived during his early years.

His first paintings were done on scraps of rainbow sandstone found on the Boquillas Ranch where he worked in Arizona near the Grand Canyon. It was there that his work was discovered by a man who ran the El Tovar Hotel and Kelly's painting career was launched.

Unhampered by formal art training and the opinions of professors, he paints what he knows and loves.In the fifty years he has been painting and sculpting. His personality and popularity have taken him to countries where most cowboys would have felt out of place. He has had one man shows around the world including England, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and most of the major cities of the USA.

Kelly's life, like his work, is loose and untrammeled by conformity. For most of it he has preferred to live under the stars, in the endless expanse of nature sheltered only by a teepee or gypsy wagon. His daily life is guided by the promptings of the Great Spirit, provided for and protected by the same source.

Currently, he lives in the Chihuahua Desert, near the Rio Grande that he has always loved, in a small mud and stick house that he and his wife made with their own hands.

Source: Black Crow Art and Publishing, Co, 1/2003:

Mr. Pruitt passed on in February of 2009.