"Plains Archer" by John Nieto (1936- July 11, 2018): Starting off with a BANG!

I'm going to start my blog off with one of my most awesome finds ever. A couple years ago, I found a painting that I fell in love with, and I mean I fell HARD. It was listed on an auction site, the artist not known, and it was listed as PICKUP ONLY - about 2500 miles from my house! I agonized about how I would get it home if I bought it (the canvas sizes up at a whopping 40 X 30 inches!) - who do I know out there? Would my friends be willing to pick it up and ship it for me? Would they be able to get it sent out safely? Worry, worry, worry... The auction ended without any bids before I could figure it out, and I found myself going through emotions similar to a bad breakup (depression, crying, feeling like I hadn't done enough.. you know the drill). A few days later, much to my joy, it was re-listed. I bid on it immediately, then checked it every couple hours for a week until I had won it (indeed, I was the only bidder). During that week I called a whole bunch of specialty shippers, only to find that UPS will pick up, box and ship those faraway auction wins for a reasonably fair price. Bless you, Big Brown!

Fast forward six months, and I'd been waking up with this wonderfully vibrant painting hanging across from my bed and putting a smile on my face every morning, even though I had not been able to decipher the signature or find out a thing about it. I'm sitting at my computer, surfing through past auction results from a well-known auction house in the Southwest that specializes in Western art. Now, I mainly collect bronzes, and I'd only been clicking on the links to the bronzes in the lists on their site. I realized suddenly that I could click another link and browse by thumbnails. DOH! I'd only been surfing those past results for several years...

After a good hour of looking at the pretty pictures, I saw a painting that looked... well, kinda like mine. Something about the lines and colors... even though the subject matter was different (a wolf), I clicked on the thumbnail and checked it out. It was a painting by John Nieto. Huh, not familiar with him, did he sculpt any bronzes? Hmm... I looked at the close-up of the signature. Then I looked at my painting. Then back at the screen. And back again to my painting... By gum!! My Indian Archer was painted by John Nieto. Mystery solved!!

My next action was to search Google for the artist. Wow. Seriously, wow. If you're not familiar with his work or bio, hie thee hence to your favorite search engine and discover! I feel honored and humbled to be the owner of one of his originals. Truly, truly honored and humbled.

Next I searched Google Images for "Nieto archer". Try it. It was VERY enlightening.

And now, without further ado, I present the original, acrylic on canvas painting titled "Plains Archer" by John Nieto:

"Plains Archer" by John Nieto

 As you can probably tell, I kinda suck at taking pictures of paintings. Here's a slightly better one, showing the colors much better, but sadly with flash added:

"Plains Archer" by John Nieto, with flash

 Isn't this painting ten kinds of AWESOME?

This summer I will be taking my painting to Mr. Nieto himself for authentication. I am terrifically excited!!!