Fort Worth Cowboy

Project Details

Created for The Art and Soul of Fort Worth, a destination marketing campaign presented in Chicago, Fort Worth Cowboy was designed to communicate the city's distinctive identity by combining its Western roots with its thriving arts and cultural scene. The campaign required a memorable visual that could represent Fort Worth while standing apart from traditional cowboy imagery.

The illustration was inspired by a historic photograph discovered while researching the city's archives with Douglas Harman, former President and CEO of the Fort Worth Convention & Visitors Bureau. The original image captured an anonymous cowboy inside a saloon in Hell's Half Acre, the legendary entertainment district that once defined early Fort Worth. Rather than recreating the photograph, I isolated the figure and transformed him into a bold, contemporary illustration influenced by the vibrant color palettes and printing techniques of Pop Art.

By pairing a nineteenth-century subject with a modern graphic style, the illustration created a visual bridge between Fort Worth's history and its evolving cultural identity. The resulting artwork became the centerpiece of the campaign, presenting a familiar symbol of the American West in a way that felt fresh, engaging, and unmistakably Fort Worth.