Kyril Bruce DeFoor

Biography

Kyril Bruce DeFoor is a full-time studio artist working from his home in the beautiful Bitterroot
Mountain valley of Montana. Besides his work as a painter, his passion has always been about
sharing the gift of art, which he has done with over 5,000 students during his extensive teaching
career. He served as a teacher, instructor, and then as a university professor with 40 years of
teaching experience. He was awarded several 1% for the Arts State projects involving a wide
variety of mediums. He and his students have created countless murals and public art installations
across the southwest. Although he has mastered virtually every art medium, he is primarily a
painter focusing on oil, acrylic, pastel, and mixed mediums.

Galleries/Exhibitions:
The Grace Museum, Abilene TX
George Phippin Invitational Art Show, Prescott AZ
Eula May Edwards Memorial Museum, Clovis NM
Panhandle Plains Invitational Art Show and Sale, Canyon TX
Ruidoso Public Library, Ruidoso NM
ENMU Library, Portales NM
Windows Gallery CCC, Clovis NM
Pintores Art League, Clovis NM
Garden City Kansas Western Art Show
Southwest Art Gallery, Sedona AZ
Adobe Gallery, Santa Fe NM

Education:
Master of Fine Art in Painting, West Texas A&M
Masters in Sculpture, West Texas A&M
Masters in Painting, West Texas State University
Masters in Art Education, Eastern New Mexico University
Bachelors in Fine Arts in Painting, Eastern New Mexico University

Artist Statement
“Trust me when I tell you that I can’t bear to create a thing that’s just ‘more of the same’. The
minute I achieve a level of expertise in my work, I find myself instantly bored and have to start a
new search for the next muse waiting just around the corner. My motto being, the ‘next’ is always
more important than the last. My art-life has been a long string of arrivals and departures like that.
Now though, I’m in a sweet spot. I’m excited about my new series of oil paintings since they
celebrate a groundbreaking alternative to the stereotypical western art scene. Each image is
based upon some dusty childhood memories of cowboy paper cutouts, somehow surprised to find
themselves on the stage of a modern wild west diorama. It’s a slightly surreal but, nonetheless,
satisfying arrangement of imagery that unites the past with the present.
No one can even glimpse these oils without being captured, taken up, and then transported into
their own private theater as they watch their own storyline unfold. Every color-filled painting is a
wide open window to my ‘New West’ and that window seat view is a wonderment indeed.”