About Sheryl Bodily

A western wildlife and landscape artist, Sheryl Bodily is a resident of Montana. He was the winner of the 1986 Ellensburg Washington Rodeo Association Poster Award, and recently received Best of Show/Flatwork at the Florence Festival Art Auction in Florence, Montana.

Sheryl Bodily was born in Boise, Idaho, on April 20, 1936, the second oldest in a family with one brother and four sisters. Mr. Bodily’s father was a farmer in the Boise Valley, and he remembers six moves to different farms in that region. He described his father as the breadwinner and his mother as the counselor and teacher in his early years.

His enthusiastic interest in Native American people and their contemporary culture has continued to grow over the years and has had a tremendous influence on his art. Mr. Bodily first remembers drawing in the first grade of the Meridian Idaho Grade School, and being told at that time by his teacher that someday he would become an artist. The artist laughingly suggested that, “it took nearly thirty years to prove her right.”

Mr. Bodily began oil painting at 14, and oil has been his primary medium since that time. He has also completed a number of works in pen and ink, but at present works almost entirely in oils. After completing high school, Mr. Bodily studied commercial art for two years at Brigham Young University in Utah.

In the fall of 1970, an art auction was held through the Pacific Northwest Indian Center in Spokane, Washington where Sheryl Bodily sold paintings for twice their listed value. A few months later, the same thing was repeated at an auction in Great Falls, and suddenly an artist who had been painting professionally for 12 years was discovered.

Known for Indian scenes with children, old cabins, stage coaches, wagon trains and wildlife, his work is in many collections including that of Lyndon Johnson. In Ellensburg, Washington, he won the Goodey Indian Culture Award at the National Art Show.

Source: askART.com
Biography from Coeur d’Alene Galleries