History of the
Cowgirl Furniture.

In the late 1980s, Durango artist John Thomas was working on series of paintings about old-west cowboys. But they seemed to predictable and the theme was overdone in western artist circles. So he pushed the idea a little further and came up with a few paintings on cowgirls instead.

The only thing was, there were precious few photos of old-west cowgirls to work from. He decided to make his own.

Somewhere along the line, he decided that painting on canvas was humdrum too, so he moved to furniture. That led to a couple of shows in town and then a high demand for the cowgirl furniture. Before the series had run its course, over 800 pieces of furniture were created in his own shop and hand-painted and sold to local and distant collectors.

Eventually, the first songs which eventually came to make up the Cowgirl Opera came to mind....