Duane Bryers Still Hoping oil 18 x 24
Nearly 50 years ago, Stuart Johnson, owner of Settlers West Galleries, went into a steakhouse on Tucson’s east side. What he remembers from that night was not the food, though.
Inside the restaurant, the walls were clad with prints of original works by Duane “Dick” Bryers.
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh. This guy is terrific,’” Johnson said. “I saw his name. At the time, I could get the telephone number, so I called him from the restaurant, set up an appointment and said, ‘I want to show your paintings.’”
Born on July 2, 1911, Bryers grew up on a small farm in northern Michigan. At the age of 12, he and his parents moved to the small mining town of Virginia, Minnesota.
“I liked to draw when I was little, but I didn't say to myself, ‘Okay, now I'm going to work hard to become an artist,’” Bryers said in a 1997 interview with Michael Ewing. “I couldn't help it. I was always drawing.”
Starting out early, he taught himself to draw through how-to books and correspondence courses. Even as a young man, he was seldom found without a sketchbook in tow.
“I sketched everything,” he said in that same interview. “I'd sit in the car on main street and watch people walk by, and I’d have my sketchbook, and I would sketch. I was never ever without a sketch pad, so I learned to draw by myself”
At the tail end of his teenage years, the Wall Street crash of 1929 hit, helping kick off the Great Depression. As a creative way to make money, Bryers and his friends created the Jingling Brothers, a traveling circus. Flying high above hand-woven safety nets, he served as the trapeze artist.
Bryers continued his artistic pursuits, verging beyond pen and paper. In 1936, he created large ice sculptures of Amelia Earhart, George Washington and Will Rogers.
His big payday came in 1937, when after multiple attempts, he finally convinced the local school board to commission a 10 by 103 foot mural depicting and honoring the town’s rich mining history. For the massive 1,030 square foot project, they paid him $3,000, which would be equivalent to roughly $67,000 in 2026.
To do the subject justice, Bryers embarked on extensive research, visiting local underground and pit mines to gather source material. He completed the mural in eight months.
With his money, Bryers took off to New York City to become one of its many starving artists. Exploring the vast array of art offered by the city’s museum, he opened his mind to new and different forms of artistic expression.
To get by, he worked for several different studios at a time and shared a small apartment with three other people, including a friend from back home.
Not long after, the U.S. became involved in World War II. As the other boys in his bunkhouse were drafted into the military, Bryers was forced to downsize.
In 1942, Bryers entered into the National War Poster Competition. While he may not have won first place, his work received congratulations from President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was featured in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Not long after, he enrolled in aviation mechanics school with the U.S. Army Air Force. With his love for art everpresent, Bryers painted pinups on planes. Flight crews paid him $4 per plane.
It did not take long for the higher-ups to recognize his gift; he was reclassified and allowed to do posters and draw a comic strip for the base newspaper. “Cokey,” his strip centering the unfortunate misadventures and mishaps of one unlucky fellow, was picked up for syndication and ran until the early 1950s.
After his service, he moved to Chicago along with his wife and three children. There, he found work as a commercial artist. After a short stint, he uprooted to Connecticut and worked as an illustrator for large New York advertising agencies, sharing a small studio with Tom Hill.
In 1956, while working in New York, Bryers came up with what was to become his most popular creation: Hilda, a full figured redhead.
“I got the idea for a plumpy gal pinup and thought, ‘I'd like to make it into a calendar series,’” he said in a 2010 interview with Bonnie Henry from the Arizona Daily Star. "But how was I going to sell a plump girl?”
With his new character, Bryers broke away from the traditional pin up girl stereotypes. Hilda established herself as a fun-loving, voluptuous, adventurous and capable woman.
“She embodies him,” Gabe Jensen, Bryers’ grandson, said. “She’s always making the best of any situation. There's like 250 Hildas, and in every single one of them, she's having the time of her life – no matter what the situation is. She is just this happy-go-lucky chick. That's him.”
Hilda became a smash hit. He began churning out calendars for Brown & Bigelow. With steady money coming in, Bryers moved to Tucson, Arizona in 1958. He kept Hilda going, but began exploring portraying scenes of the American West.
In 1964, he and his wife divorced. In the early 1970s, he and his new wife, Denise “Dee” Ray, moved to a small town in Mexico, just about 90 miles outside of Mexico City.
While living in Mexico, the couple pooled their talents together and created “The Bunkhouse Boys from the Lazy Daisy Ranch,” a book depicting the lives of 27 comical cowboy characters. Ray handled the writing; Bryers provided the illustrations.
Upon their 1975 return to the U.S., they bought some land in Sonoita, Arizona and began building a house on their new property.
The Tucson Seven (clockwise from top left) Bob Kuhn, Harley Brown, Howard Terpning, Tom HIll, Don Crowley, Duane Bryers, Kenneth Riley
The Tucson 7 come together
Over the two decades after Bryers’ Arizona arrival, fellow artists Harley Brown, Don Crowley, Hill, Bob Kuhn, Ken Riley, Howard Terpning followed suit. Although they flocked to Arizona independent of each other, they all had a common goal: paint scenes of the West.
Like Bryers, all six found their way to being represented by Settlers West Galleries.
“I was the first to come here, and they all tagged along,” Dick Bryers said in a 1997 interview with Jim Willoughby of Southwest Art Magazine.
Living parallel lives in the Western art ecosystem, they came to form close friendships. Together, they became the Tucson 7, a name coined by Bryers. The septet ushered in a new chapter of Western art. Each brought in their own unique style and personality.
In 1997, the Tucson Museum of Art put together an exhibit featuring their work to commemorate their long lasting impact on the field
Even among the legendary figures of Tucson 7, Bryers stood out. He was the only one of the bunch who had no formal training. Gathering from his vast experiences and influences, his art featured a unique approach, style and subject matter.
“A lot of his Western paintings have a sense of humor that artists weren't really exploring at the time,” Johnson said. “He would do scenes that put people in situations that had a tinge of humor to them and probably more of a realistic approach or melancholy approach to the subject matter than others were doing.”
“I don’t have a specialty,” Bryers said in 1997. “I’m all over the place. From one painting to the next, I never know – I never, ever know – what it’s going to be.”
A lasting legacy
For Jensen, his grandfather serves as a constant inspiration. An artist in his own right, Jensen is a prominent tattoo artist and painter based in Montana.
If not for Bryers, he would not have gone the route he did, Jensen explained.
“He showed me that life as an artist was possible,” he said. “He told me all kinds of stuff. One time he told me, ‘Your life will be crazy. It's going to be all these twists and turns, and there's going to be all these points where you don't think that you're on the right path, but you'll look back years later and know that was the right path.’”
“He described it perfectly,” he said. “That’s the life that I've been down.”
To prepare him for a career in art, Bryers did not shy away from being a harsh critic.
“When he had the opportunity to critique something, he wasn't pulling any punches,” he said. “He wanted me to get value from the critique.”
In 2012, Jensen delivered a speech at his grandfather’s funeral.
“I was trying to find the right words,” he said. “I was like, ‘When I asked him for advice about art, he was kind of, you know…”
As he paused, searching for the right way to describe it, an artist from the crowd chimed in.
“Brutal,” they said.
“And they all knew it,” Jensen said. “Everyone nodded.”
In spite of his sometimes over-the-top honesty, nearly 14 years after his passing, friends, family and colleagues remember Bryers for his immense skill, lighthearted humor and ever jovial approach to life.
“He's one of those guys where he did all these things because nobody told him he couldn't,” Jensen said. “Fortune just found him wherever he went. Life kind of opened up and made room for him to come in.”
“Dick Bryers was a good friend and a fine artist,” Terpning said. “We have one of his beautiful works in our living room that I enjoy every day. His professional skills coupled with a vital personality are evident in all his many paintings.”
“The world around Dick Bryers was an inspiring place to be,” Brown said. “His life, filled with love so heartening; his art, brilliant and motivating. I well remember when he had just turned 70 and declared, ‘I’m just getting started.’ Always filled with joy, he kept true to his word. Those glorious times with Dick Bryers have stayed with all of us and he forever lives on in our memories.”