MARTIN GRELLE, COVER KING

Not only was Martin Grelle on our first cover in September 2007, he was also on six additional covers over the next 17 years. No artist has had as many covers as the famous Texas painter known for his cowboy and Native American subject matter.

“There’s so much going on in The River’s Gift [Issue 1], with the figures and the horses, etc. There’s a lot to think through and get right anatomically. I get in these positions to make sure that they’re balanced right or that they feel right. If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t right,” Grelle said in the article. “I painted a mountain man figure for a piece in the Prix de West show in June [2007]. He was holding a trade gun. I had a trade gun myself, and I went outside and held it, and where I had to hold it for it to be balanced in my hand wasn’t where I had originally planned to draw it. The barrel was really heavy, so I had to hold it further up on the barrel end of the gun than what I originally conceived. I changed the painting to reflect that. I also modeled for the figure lifting the trunk out of the river to make sure the positioning was correct.” Today, as he was back in 2007, Grelle is one of the top painters in Western art. “Life and painting have been really good for me and I’m just going to keep trying to do the best I can do and grow with each painting,” he added.

We caught up with Grelle to ask about our first issue, and he said he has it and several other Western Art Collector covers framed in his home. “I was blown away to get your first cover. It was a special deal for me. To get your work picked out for the cover when there are so many great images in the magazine, it’s truly an honor,” he says. “Looking back on all the covers the magazine has given me, they do represent milestones in my career, especially since I was doing annual shows down in Scottsdale—first for Overland Gallery and then for Legacy Gallery. Then there were also the museum shows, CA shows, auctions. They kind of helped me up the odds for those covers. Whenever I got on a cover, though, I always felt like I was in high cotton, as my dad would say.”