Denney NeVille: A Byron artist shaped by France, the West and a lifetime of drawing

When your parents lived to be 99 and 99½, being 86 can seem almost young. But Denney NeVille of Byron has already filled those years with enough art, travel, teaching and storytelling for several lifetimes.

NeVille is known throughout the region for Western scenes, sweeping landscapes, Native American subjects and imaginative paintings that make viewers stop and look twice. He has been a regular in the Buffalo Bill Art Show and Sale for more than four decades, earned major awards at some of the West’s best-known art events and has seen his work displayed in galleries from Cody to Sheridan.

Yet one of the most important influences on his life as an artist came far from Wyoming’s mountains and sagebrush. It came during two years spent in France as a young LDS missionary.

France gave NeVille something an art school could teach only in part: the chance to witness the world’s greatest paintings, walk through ancient cathedrals and study art that had endured for centuries.

“I still can remember standing in front of some of those paintings and studying them,” NeVille said. “It’s still fresh in my mind.”

From Crayolas to art school

His mother recognized his artistic bent early. As a small child, NeVille was given Crayolas and coloring books. Before long, he had moved on to a larger canvas: the walls of the house.

“It kept me quiet,” he said with a smile, “so she just bought more Crayolas.”

He said his father also had a vivid imagination and could draw well.  NeVille remembers him showing him how to draw a box in perspective using two squares and connecting lines.

“I remember when I did that, I thought that was just amazing,” NeVille said. “I must have drawn a thousand of them.”

Like many young artists, he filled the margins of schoolbooks with drawings. Not all of his teachers appreciated it, but his parents understood that art was more than a passing interest.

After high school, NeVille attended Northwest College for a year. He was considering the military when his mother helped steer him in another direction: She connected him with Harold Hopkinson, an artist who had attended art school in California. Hopkinson encouraged NeVille to assemble a portfolio and apply to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

To NeVille’s surprise, he was accepted.

He attended for a year, then put his education on hold to serve an LDS mission in France. It proved to be an experience that changed the way he looked at art.

Lessons from history’s greatest artists

Missionary work took him to Paris and other parts of France and Belgium. Whenever missionaries came to Paris and wanted to visit the Louvre, they were often paired with NeVille.

“I was a guide at the Louvre,” he said jokingly. “I worked for the Louvre.”

He remembers approaching Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” for the first time and being struck by its size.

“I looked at it and said, ‘My, that’s small,’” he recalled. “I got up real close. In fact, I got too close, and they said, ‘Hey, back away.’”

The Mona Lisa may have been famous, but NeVille was drawn to many other works throughout the museum. He studied the paintings, the color, the drawing and the ability of great artists to tell a story with a figure, a face or a landscape.

Outside the Louvre, the cathedrals of France made an equally strong impression.

For a young man from rural Wyoming, the old churches held a kind of visual richness that was difficult to explain. Their towering stone walls, stained glass, sculptures and painted religious scenes were unlike anything he had experienced at home.

He visited Notre Dame in Paris several times. He remembers the cathedral in Strasbourg and the striking outdoor art that decorated many European cities – even the exterior carvings and architecture of the great cathedrals left an impression.

“I remember sitting on the steps of the cathedral in Strasbourg and looking back at it,” he said, still speaking with reverence about the experience. 

The influence of those years did not turn NeVille into a painter of French cathedrals. Back in the West, he would apply those lessons to clouds rolling over Wyoming, an old tipi below the Big Horn Mountains, a cowboy at work or a quiet landscape that invites viewers to imagine their own.

Back at home

After returning to the United States, NeVille reapplied to Art Center College of Design and was accepted again. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with honors, studying under instructors who were accomplished artists in their own right, including artists with connections to Disney and the animation industry.

The school was demanding. Students worked long hours to finish assignments, then had to endure public critiques of their work.

“It was intense,” NeVille said. “But all of the teachers there, they were artists first, teachers second, because they knew how to teach art.”

His training led to a position with Hughes Aircraft in Culver City, California, where he worked as an illustrator. Among other assignments, he produced illustrations involving military equipment and the Vietnam conflict.

Later, he worked in animation, helping create television cartoons, including “Archie” and “Sabrina.” He and his wife Linda eventually chose to leave Southern California and return closer to home.

That decision led NeVille to another important chapter. After a short time doing watercolor renderings for an architectural firm in Billings, he contacted famed Red Lodge cartoonist Stan Lynde, creator of “Rick O’Shay” and “Hipshot.”

Lynde invited him to visit, then soon offered him a job. NeVille and Linda moved to Red Lodge, where he worked with Lynde for several years producing the popular comic strip.

NeVille still speaks with admiration of Lynde’s talent as a writer, humorist and illustrator. The experience strengthened NeVille’s own cartooning abilities and helped preserve a playful side that continues to show up in his work today.

Some of his paintings are traditional Western scenes, carefully rendered and filled with the light, weather and open country familiar to anyone who has lived in Wyoming. Others are more imaginative. One recent work uses a repeating waterfall and river design reminiscent of the visual puzzles created by M.C. Escher.

His sense of humor also appears in his book, “Burt Umber,” a collection of cartoons and stories about artists, drawing, painting and the often uncertain business of surviving creatively.

Still painting and still learning

For many local art lovers, NeVille is most closely associated with the Buffalo Bill Art Show and Sale. He was invited to participate after his work was displayed at the Big Horn Gallery in Cody. He estimates that he has participated for about 43 years and has never missed a show.

The event has given him friendships with artists from Wyoming and across the West. It has also pushed him to continue improving.

“Every time any of us go to an art show, we should realize it’s an important opportunity to gain a better understanding of how to make it work,” he said. “I’ve learned so much from so many of the painters whose work has been in the show along with mine.”

NeVille received the Artists’ Choice Award at the Buffalo Bill Art Show and Sale in 1997 and 2005 and was named an Honored Artist in 2011. He earned Best of Show at the C.M. Russell Auction in 1982 and received the People’s Choice Award at the Buffalo Bill Quick Draw in 2017.

Age and back pain have made it harder for him to stand at an easel for hours at a time, but he continues to paint. Recently, he has been producing smaller palette-knife paintings that can be finished in shorter sessions.

They may be smaller, but they carry the same eye for color, composition and place that has marked his career.

From a boy drawing in the margins of schoolbooks to a missionary studying masterpieces in France, from animation studios in California to galleries and art shows across the West, NeVille has spent a lifetime following the path his mother launched when she handed him that first box of Crayolas.