Beilue: Holding on to an idea for 25 years

WT alumnus’ ‘On the Rita Blanca’ painting gifted to his alma mater

Glenn Lyles was by himself on the Rita Blanca grasslands northeast of Dalhart one sunny day. He was looking for something without knowing what he was looking for. Then he saw it – a herd of Hereford cattle grazing past him along the fence. Lyles always had his camera in his truck just in case.

Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap.

“I knew I’d paint that one day,” he said. “I’ve had that in the back of my mind that long.”

That was 25 years ago, so long ago those photos were taken with an actual camera and not a cell phone. What was in the back of his mind eventually made its way to his hands with a painting that took about nine months to complete in the pandemic year of 2020. But complete he did.

“On the Rita Blanca” is unusual in its dimensions and viewpoint. The size is 6 feet by 20 inches, and the painting is such that it gives those who see it a sense that they are within the herd surrounded by cattle.

The painting, completed in December, was presented to West Texas A&M University in January. “On the Rita Blanca” hangs on the second-floor hallway entrance of the Happy State Bank Research and  Academic Building in the Paul Engler College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences.

“It’s wonderful to have a talented alumnus give back to our college,” said Dr. Kevin Pond, dean of the college. “It’s such a beautiful piece. We’ve put it in a prominent spot so students, faculty and visitors can always see it.”

It seemed liked a logical home for his work to Lyles, who earned a degree in animal science from WT in 1973.  It is the second painting of Lyles to his alma mater. In 2010, the year of WT’s centennial celebration, his “Legacy of the Southern Herd” hangs in the Alumni Association building.

“That one was unveiled,” Lyles said. “I’d never had one unveiled before. That was a wonderful experience.”

In 2020, Lyles kickstarted his artwork after a considerable layoff to take care of his mother, Christine Lyles. The dimensions for this painting were not going to fit a home. He thought it would be a fit for WT’s new Engler building. WT was where Lyles spent “maybe the best four years of my life,” which included traveling across the country on the livestock judging team and making lifelong friends.

“We were very excited about it. We knew the quality of artist that Glenn is, knew what he painted at the alumni center,” Pond said. “We walked the halls looking for a place where the dimensions he talked about would work. This spotlights him and cattle, and the painting and the type of cattle that’s in our region fits right into our legacy.”

Lyles, who grew up in Hale Center, was an artist long before he was a farmer. He was born with club feet, and at 5 years old, he spent most of the year in a wheelchair. He began watching artist Jon Gnagy, and his show, “You Are an Artist,” on NBC. The show offered an art kit, and Christine Lyles bought one for her son.

That was the beginning. It was nurtured along by Ruth Barnett, a woman in Hale Center from whom Lyles took art lessons for six years until he was in the ninth grade. He had a talent for drawing, and that talent ran in the family. A sister and an aunt also painted as did Devi Barker, a great aunt from Floydada.

“When I was five years old,” Lyles said, “she bent down and looked at me said, ‘Artists see things differently from everyone else.’”

Quit farming to focus on painting

Lyles joined the Amarillo Art Association, and he and his sister had their work at shows in Amarillo. They then got one of the last two spots in a night class taught by renowned western artist Jack Sorenson.

“That man changed my life,” Lyles said. “I didn’t realize I had such an affinity for color and light. I had already been exposed to that through Ruth Barnett, but this was taken to the next level.”

After 3 ½ years with Sorensen, he followed him to a one-week workshop in Kansas each year for 10 years. Lyles eventually took Sorensen’s place and taught that same workshop for another 10 years, which was how he backed into art teaching.

That eventually led to teaching oil painting at the Western Art Academy in Kerrville, a one-month workshop for scholarship students from the San Antonio and Houston livestock shows.

All of this would be difficult to do if Lyles were still farming, the vocation he intended to pursue after leaving WT. John Lyles, his father, bought some additional land near Hale Center, told his son he really needed his help and they could farm together.

Lyles did until he was 40 years old. In the early 1990s, the arthritis in his foot was so painful it made farming difficult. Between that and his love for Western art, he quit and decided to make an artist a full-time pursuit.

“There was about three years when I made $9,000 a year,” he said. “I wasn’t starving, but I wasn’t getting fat either.”

But Lyles was making a name in art circles across the state. His work was a fixture in galleries in Fredericksburg and in other galleries in the Hill Country. Since most of his art was of cattle, he was known as the “cow guy,” a moniker he gladly accepted. There was also a “bluebonnet lady” and a “cloud guy.”

Lyles has never actually put a number to his paintings, but averaging 30 to 35 a year for about 25 years, that’s more than 800. He used to paint 5 x 7 canvasses of cow faces, called his “Cover Girl” series after one of his sister’s favorite teen magazines, Cover Girl. He sold 250 of those.

“They sold like hotcakes,” he said. “I got to where I could paint a cow’s face with my eyes closed.”

Until 2020, Lyles had a four-year hiatus from art. Most of his time was consumed by caring for parents and later becoming head of the family trust. A little more than a year ago, his mother was moved to a care facility near Waco where family was.

That gave Lyles some extra time to return to art. He wasn’t interested in commercial art. He wanted to paint to satisfy himself. That’s when he approached WT about putting that 25-year-old photo of his on an odd-shaped canvas.

“There is a painting from E. Martin Hennings from 1911, ‘Cattle on the Move,’ that was a herd and the viewpoint was almost like in a drone,” Lyles said. “It was above the herd and you can see across it. That influenced me. But I wanted my painting to have you in the herd, not above it or behind it.”

Lyles put a young calf in the middle of the herd, a focal point that eyes would be drawn. Normally, a focused Lyles could finish in about six weeks.  But with trips to see his ailing mother – she died at age 98 in October – and other duties, it took about nine months to complete.

“Life sometimes gets in the way of art,” he said.

“On the Rita Blanca” is one of his signature pieces, but it is not in any way a farewell piece. As he nears 70, there are no plans to slow down. Lyles has a painting above his fireplace his first teacher, Ruth Barnett, painted of the lower waterfalls at Yellowstone. He believed it her best work. She was 87 when she painted that.

“I’ve had a wonderful life,” he said, “and continue to have a wonderful life because I get to do what I love.”

Do you know of a student, faculty member, project, an alumnus or any other story idea for “WT: The Heart and Soul of the Texas Panhandle?” If so, email Jon Mark Beilue at jbeilue@wtamu.edu.