Richard Schafer

Wood carver, clay and bronze artist, Richard Schafer was born in Cardston, Alberta in 1922 and grew up in the Coaldale area. He left home at thirteen to take up employment on cattle and sheep ranches, where he learned to break horses and worked on cattle and horse drives. He was a member of Reg Kesler's Wild Horse Race Team for ten years at the Calgary Stampede and worked for Canadian author and environmentalist Andy Russell as a big game hunter and head packer/guide in the Rocky Mountains (in his book “Trails of a Wilderness Wanderer,” Russell recalled “Slim” Schafer as fine packer with a unique sense of humour). Upon his retirement in 1981, Schafer drew upon his rich life experiences as inspiration when he began sculpting in clay, cedar and later in bronze. His “unique sense of humour” also added to the mix. Schafer had his first public show two years later at Crescent Heights High School in Calgary, and afterwards exhibited his work in a number of public institutions, including the Medicine Hat Museum, the Muttart Gallery and at the Alberta Pavilion at Expo 1986 in Vancouver.

Although he had done a little wood carving on his own in the nineteen-fifties, Schafer had no formal art education and was essentially self-taught when he came to art in his later life. He is generally classified as a “folk artist,” and like most artists of this genre, his works had a straightforward, naive quality that was accessible and uniquely personal. His cowboys all expressed the broad-shouldered, square-jawed presence that we associate with men in that line of work and while there was humour in his depictions, there was honesty, too. It was qualities such as these that made his art so popular with knowledgeable art collectors and with the general public as well.