James Reynolds was Born in 1926 in California. He grew up with a grandmother who owned a hotel built in the 1800’s which still housed rugged travelers as well as cowboys and herders. He came into frequent contact with these men and was here that he first heard the stories of the Old West. After the Bombing of Pearl Harbor Reynolds finished high school and worked as a plane riveter before enlisting in the Navy as part of the Pacific Amphibious Core. After the war Reynolds pursued his natural passion for painting and studied at the Kann Institute in Beverly Hills. After getting his degree he spent years working for many major art studios and gained a footing among his peers.
Eventually developing his lasting fame in the cowboy genre Reynolds would travel and live with cowboys and Native Americans, following them and living the life they did. Many of his paintings were made while he was out among his subjects but a large portion were painted from the memories he made during those travels.
His paintings are fantastically rendered using quick but solid brush strokes which blend somewhere between impressionistic styles and natural realism. The painterly aesthetic is outstanding as is his bold use of color which becomes obvious to the eye the longer you look at his paintings.
