A harsh critique spurred Walter Piehl to start painting rodeos

MOORHEAD — Sometimes the harshest critique leads to a greater achievement.

That was the case when artist Walter Piehl Jr. was in graduate school at the University of North Dakota in 1964. A teacher told him he should give up what he called Piehl’s “lame and insipid landscapes.”

“That was a shock,” Piehl said this week from his studio in Minot, North Dakota. “I probably shouldn’t have been in the MFA program. I didn’t have a strong portfolio.”

The teacher knew that Piehl was very involved in rodeo life and asked him why he didn’t paint that instead.

“I didn’t think it was appropriate for a fine artist to paint cowboy stuff,” the artist said.

The critique spurred Piehl to capture rodeo life on paper and canvas and in the process, over the last 60 years he’s become one of North Dakota’s