Virtual Art Tour

Kenneth Riley, American, born 1919

Medicine Priest

Tucson resident Kenneth Riley, was born in Waverly, Miss. and spent his teenage years in Kansas. It was at the Art Institute of Kansas City that Riley began his formal art training with Thomas Hart Benton. He later attended the Art Students League and the Grand Central School of Art, both in New York.

Riley served in World War II as a combat artist and, upon his return, had a successful 25-year career in magazine and book illustration in New York. His works appeared in all of the major magazines, including the Saturday Evening Post, Life, Reader’s Digest and National Geographic.

Riley began his fine art painting career in the early 1970s and, in an interview for Southwest Art magazine, said, “Illustrators are uniquely qualified to paint the history of the West. Their basic training is to take subject matter that no longer exists and give it authenticity – to use their imaginations and empathy to transfer history into a context that becomes very believable.”

Riley uses written accounts, primarily journals to do research for his storytelling paintings. “Journals are especially inspirational,” he said, “since they are not watered down through successive interpretation. It’s almost as if you are experiencing the event as it happens.” Although Riley uses the figure as the focus of his paintings, he utilizes it as a way to “express our common humanity.”

He is inspired by the past, then paints “the passage of time, the same things taking place for centuries – building gradually to a higher state, the continuity of one generation to the next, the earliest cultures to our most recent ones.” He is a member of Cowboy Artists of America and is one of the most respected artists of his era.