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John Kittelson is a product of the American West of legend, an authentic cowboy of the plains,  a harness maker and former rodeo performer, and one of the world's great woodcarvers.

His work is known literally worldwide, and fancied by collectors in Asia, South America and Europe. It has been a highlight for 18 years in the annual art auctions sponsored by the Harness Tracks of America College Scholarship art auction.

Kittelson's career is the stuff of fiction.  Born and raised on a South Dakota farm, he ran away from home at 14 for a life breaking horses, mending fences, making harness and working cattle. He toiled on ranches in South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska and Wyoming, and it was during the long, cold evenings in the bunkhouses that he started 'whittling.' "I ate, lived and slept with horses," he says, and he participated in roping events, trail rides and rodeos. He was a bronc buster, and he came to know horses as few men do. "Knowing the life of a cowboy, the hard knocks and the loneliness,  was essential to my work," Kittelson says. "And not a library cowboy, but a fellow who knows what it is to stomp around the corrals, get kicked in the shins by an ornery steer, and chase cattle in a blizzard. Knowing that hard life of a cowboy firsthand has taught me all there is to know about horses.  A horse, for example, has an expressive face.  He might be saying he's dead tired or he might be saying, 'ain't no damn cowpoke goin' to get on my back.' I've seen all the expressions you can imagine, so I can recall the feeling, and I  can put that feeling into my work."

He surely can. His carvings and bronzes and paintings  have been purchased by tycoons and the common man, here and abroad, and range as high as $20,000 and beyond. His dioramas of the west command far more. 

When the Cowboy Artists of America was formed, Kittelson was one of the first 15 to be named, the highest honor that can be bestowed on that profession.

Now, as his career winds down in his mid 70s, Kittelson has selected the HTA Scholarship Fund as the exclusive worldwide agency for his dramatic and incredibly detailed carved dioramas, horses, western and African animals, and vehicles of the old West that reside in his museum in Cody, Wyoming. 

We are honored to be John Kittelson's sole agent, and proud to be able offer his stunning carvings on an exclusive basis worldwide.