Photos by Christiaan Blok Marless Fellows is known for her paintings of Western subjects. Here, she captures son Daniel Dobson in cowboy gear.

Figurative painter Marless Fellows puts her brush where her heart is

For most of her life, Marless Fellows had no plans to become an artist, much less a Western-style painter. “It got hold of me,” the Tempe woman says with a smile. “And now it’s the greatest passion I’ve ever known.”

That she would wind up painting cowboys, horses and such had some foreshadowing in her childhood, when she won prizes taking part in barrel racing in small Arizona rodeos. Back then, her family couldn’t afford a horse trailer, so she and her horse, Sam, only competed in events that were within riding distance, she recalls. Her dad, a career Navy warrant officer who brought the family to Arizona, taught his girls to work hard and be self-sufficient. “I’m competitive,” declares Fellows. She adds that both her mom and dad always encouraged her in all of her endeavors.

Her journey into the world of art began in the early 1990s, when her husband’s 80-year-old grandfather suggested she try her hand at oil painting. “I started it as a fun little hobby,” Fellows recalls. “He bought me a Bob Ross Master Paint Set that he saw on TV. It promised that ‘with a little dedicated practice, masterpieces would flow’ from my brush. I tried it and immediately knew that I was terrible.

“So I decided to put all my energy into educating myself,” she continues. “I always loved to draw, but it was ‘doodly’ drawing. When I signed up for classes at Mesa Community College I took ‘hard’ drawing, the traditional kind. We started at the very beginning, learning to sharpen our pencils right with X-ACTO knives.”

Fellows is convinced that five semesters of life drawing instruction gave her a solid basis for doing representational art. “Otherwise,” she says, “you draw heads too big and arms too long.” The school’s demanding course work developed not only her technical skill but a love of figure painting. “I prefer to evoke emotion through people and animals rather than landscape or still life,” she notes. “I place objects in my paintings for dimension.”

Excerpt from Sunlit Cowboy, oil on linen, 24"H x 12"W

From drawing, Fellows moved on to the study of color, which she pursued at Scottsdale Artists’ School. “Using the color wheel, making great color—I don’t think that I could know everything about that if I spent my whole life studying it,” she admits. It has become perhaps her most important artistic tool. “I revel in manipulating color,” she says. “I want my viewers to experience its emotional power as well as its obvious visual beauty.” The red bandana, the bright white hat, the dark, dark horse—these are the kinds of elements that draw the attention of her viewers to the heart of her work.

The Scottsdale Artists’ School offered Fellows an opportunity to work under such well-known and diverse painters as John Burton, Joseph Lorusso, Clayton Beck III and Carolyn Anderson. These painters helped her explore the creation of dimension and form. “I’ve taken a little bit from each of my teachers,” she remarks. “They’ve given me a framework for how to paint.”

Fellows would personalize this framework, developing her own routine procedure for painting. “First, the subject that I’m going to paint grabs me emotionally,” she explains. “I think shape and form, then shadow and color. After that, I start adding the ‘Marless touch.’ More personality, more light, exaggerate here and there. That’s the fun part!”

Fellows has painted still-lifes, landscapes and portraits, but the iconic West is her preferred subject matter. “Growing up as a cowgirl, I was destined to paint Western subjects,” she says with a laugh. “I’m drawn to the life of the down-to-earth, hardworking cowboy and his slow-speaking gentleness.” She has been inspired by such well-known members of Cowboy Artists of America as Bruce Greene and Bill Owen, she says.