Ricardo Moreno Beasley 1908-1994
Going Wild: Those who work in nature must move to the rhythms of the beasts. – Ricardo Moreno Beasley
Ricardo Moreno Beasley was born on December 10, 1908, in Kingsville, Texas, the third of five children to Richard Jameson Beasley and Concepcion Moreno Beasley. Ricardo grew up on Rancho Irapuato, the family ranch three miles outside of Ben Bolt, Texas. At an early age, he began working on the family ranch, helping his father tend the cattle, manage the crops, and handle other daily ranch duties. One early morning, as dawn broke, the twelve-year-old Ricardo saw, in the distance, a vaquero on horseback coming out of the brush. That vision inspired him to become a vaquero, a decision that would forever alter the course of his life.
His mother, Concepcion, a voracious reader, gave her young son his first art book, El Pintor, along with other books that would lead him to great authors and poets. His fascination with the written word grew as he began expressing himself through poetry, reading the works of esteemed writers such as Thoreau, Emerson, Keats, Aristotle, Delacroix, Socrates, Da Vinci, and Michelangelo. He began expressing himself through poetry while continuing to hone his craft as an artist, drawing and sketching farm animals and wildlife on his family's working ranch.
In 1942, Beasley relocated to Duval County, where he lived alone for 10 years in a cow camp several miles west of San Diego, Texas. He immersed himself in his art and writing, declaring, "Duval is my heaven!" and crediting this particular period as his most productive. While working as a vaquero, he captured the often challenging vaquero way of life and all that it entailed in the rugged South Texas Brush Country. Each drawing and sketch is either autobiographical or biographical, capturing his unique signature style of day-to-day vaquero life. His highly stylized pen-and-ink, pencil, and charcoal medium mirrored the raw, rugged landscape itself. He encapsulated the energetic, poetic beauty of the wild steers, mustangs, and other wildlife that roamed the barren brush country.
Beasley devoted his life to expressing the heart and soul of the vaquero way of life through his art, poetry, and narrative writings. He remained active, and his art was prolific through the 1980s. He sketched day and night, capturing animals in the wild and the brave men who drove cattle through rugged South Texas. He drew as if he had a camera in hand, capturing the adventure as it unfolded. He recorded those adventures and ways of life in his journals, small notebooks, and any scrap of paper he could find.
Together, they inspired Ricardo Moreno Beasley, an artist, poet, and storyteller of the vaquero's bygone era.
Additional Photos Courtesy of Connie Beasley.
