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2003 Honored Artist James Bama In selecting James Bama as the 2003 recipient, the show recognizes an artist who has been intimately associated with Cody Country and its people for almost three decades. As Bama sees it, the award honors Cody Country as much as it honors his own life’s work. "Everything I’ve done - the rodeo, the trappers, the mountain men - has been done around here," he says. "The fact that I’m from Cody makes this very significant to me. They’re really honoring Cody, and the Buffalo Bill Historical Center." Born in Manhattan in 1926, the young Bama was fascinated by the artwork he saw in comic strips such as Tarzan and Flash Gordon and he began to draw. He attended art school in New York, and worked for 15 years with the Charles E. Cooper Studio - the top illustration house in the country at the time - painting dozens of magazine ads, movie posters and paperback covers. After a vacation to Wyoming in 1966, Jim and his wife Lynne decided to move to the West, where he turned his attention to painting its "real" people and places. He considers himself an "American realist" who has painted nearly every imaginable subject. "I never came out here with the idea to be
a Western artist," Bama says. "It just happened - and
that’s the way it should be." |
