An NFT Creator With a Love for the Wild West

The Real Deal By Jim Rey

82-year-old artist Jim Rey began his artistic career putting paintbrush to canvas. In the last few years, Rey added NFTs and digital art to his repertoire. Armed with a Wacom Intuos 4 tablet and Photoshop, Rey has learned to mimic his usual composition in the digital world. With 46 years of experience being a professional painter, Rey took to the digital art world with ease.

The subject matter chosen by the Durango artist remains to be the same across mediums—the Wild West.

Freedom by Jim Rey

“When I was a youngster, there were two major influences that fueled my interest in all things cowboy,” says Rey. “The first being that my grandfather was a cowman who ranched in the Northeast corner of California. I spent my summers with him, riding horses and working cattle. The second was my introduction to artist, writer and cowboy Will James. From an early age, I read his books and studied his drawings.”

Shadow Makers by Jim Rey

Throughout Rey’s career as an artist, the landscape for art has reinvented itself. “I have been a gallery artist exclusively since 1976, Rey tells Colorado Homes & Lifestyles. “My medium is mostly paintings in oil. Nowadays, there seem to be many more artists of all the disciplines that are taking part in the arts which means there more people that are supporting the arts. There is truly no telling how much the digital age will affect art.”