Biography
Brian Cowdery has been an artist his entire life. Born in 1949 to a meticulous home builder/cabinet maker father and a versatile, multitalented artist mother, he grew up in an environment of constant creativity. During his teens, Cowdery developed a keen interest in cars and began working with metal. He also experimented with almost every other type of art for many years.
At age 15 Cowdery was hired for his first sign painting job. A local car salesman paid him $15 to letter SOUTH SIDE AUTO SALES in big red letters across the front of a new concrete block car lot building.
An enlistment in the United States Marine Corps from 1968 to 1971 instilled in him the tenacity and drive necessary to be successfully self employed.
Cowdery's work has been featured in several art museum shows and sculpture shows. He firmly believes that if art is sold it should sell on its own merit. After half a century of self employment in the arts, he takes great pride in never having asked for nor accepted any grant money.
From 1974 to the present, Cowdery has been a full time artist. His involvement in automotive metal sculpture began in the early 1980s and continues to this day. Cowdery cuts, forms, shapes, and welds steel using tools and techniques dating from the 1920s. As a mostly self-taught artist, his love of automotive design shines through in each of his original pieces. Every sculpture Cowdery produces is hand made and painted, and is signed and either numbered or identified as one of a kind.
The photos below illustrate how your unique piece is created.
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Some Early Work
Painted Jackets
During the bomber jacket craze, Cowdery painted lots of leather jackets.
Solemn Duty
In 1990, Cowdery's good friend Al Aune died suddenly. Al, better known as Fat Albert, had just completed a book on Arcade cast iron toys. Al Aune retained the spirit of a child to his dying day. When called upon to design a headstone for his friend, Cowdery chose to use the image of an Arcade Reo car from the front of Aune's book and the lettering style used on the cardboard boxes the old Arcade cast iron toys originally came in. The ghost image of children across the bottom of the stone is also artwork from an Arcade toy box. Albert always spelled his name with the R backward.
