Billy Schenck

Billy Schenck (born 1947) is the originator of what critics and galleries have called "Western Pop Art" — a genre he created by fusing the hard-edged graphic language of American Pop Art with cowboy iconography, lone sheriff silhouettes, and the lurid sunset palette of the Hollywood Western. Trained as a fine artist and deeply immersed in the New York art world of the 1970s — his studio was near Warhol's Factory — Schenck brought the formal strategies of Lichtenstein and Warhol back to the imagery of the Western frontier, creating paintings that are simultaneously a celebration and a critique of the cowboy myth. The results are works of considerable formal beauty and genuine wit. He exhibits regularly in Scottsdale and has shown widely in the United States and Europe. His work hangs in the collections of the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art and major private collections.