Bright Colors, Bic Pens & a Little Bit of Grit
Meet Lauren Chaney, the artist behind the winning 2027 Art of the Cowgirl – Cowgirl Art Contest design.
There’s something refreshingly uncomplicated about the way Lauren Chaney approaches art. Give her a blank page, a cheap Bic pen and an idea, and she’ll simply start drawing. No perfect pencil sketch underneath. No expensive tools required. No guarantee every line will land exactly where she intended. “I’m kind of a messy drawer,” she laughs. “I just go straight in with a pen and just go for it. If I mess up, I mess up. I guess that’s just the beauty of art.” Somehow, that philosophy tells you almost everything you need to know about the woman behind Lauren Chaney Designs and the winning design for the 2027 Art of the Cowgirl – Cowgirl Art Contest: Merchandise & Apparel Category. Her work is bold without trying too hard, Western without feeling expected, bright, colorful, a little wild around the edges, and unmistakably her own. Which, come to think of it, sounds an awful lot like the cowgirls who inspired it.
Long before Lauren was building a career as an artist, horses and creativity were already two constants in her life. Born in Arizona and raised primarily in Temecula, California, Lauren grew up riding and surrounded by horses. Art came just as naturally. She remembers wanting to draw and paint as far back as elementary school, followed by art classes throughout middle school and high school. But drawing wasn’t her only creative outlet. Photography caught her attention, too, and by high school Lauren was freelancing, running photography sessions on the weekends and even seeing some of her first work published. During her senior year, she began experimenting with digital illustration, and suddenly the different pieces of her creative life started fitting together. Photography had introduced her to the digital side of creativity, drawing and painting gave her the freedom to make something completely her own, and horses gave her an endless source of inspiration. Why choose just one?
Lauren went on to study Graphic Design and Media Arts, earning her bachelor’s degree in 2018. Along the way, she began sharing her artwork on social media and developing the style people recognize today: bright colors, loose lines, Western imagery and plenty of personality. More recently, sayings and words have found their way into her pieces, adding another layer to the stories she tells through her work. But one thing has remained constant. Lauren has never been particularly interested in making art that looks like everyone else’s. In a world where social media can put hundreds of other artists and ideas in front of you before breakfast, she learned that sometimes the best thing a creative person can do is tune it all out. “You kind of just zone out and have your own way and creative thought process to it all,” she says.
That willingness to trust her own style eventually turned sharing artwork online into something much bigger. Today, Lauren Chaney Designs is her full-time career. She has spent more than a decade sharing her work on social media and nearly seven years creating professionally full time, building a following and client base that reaches around the world. She’s quick to credit those customers and followers with giving her not only opportunities, but the confidence to keep growing. They bought the early pieces, encouraged the new ideas, and trusted her creativity as her work evolved. What started as posting artwork online became a business, but Lauren has never let the word “business” put her creativity neatly inside one box.
She creates digital illustrations and hand-drawn pieces. She paints custom Vans. She creates Western coloring pages, with a coloring book now in the works. And she shares videos that let followers watch a drawing come to life from the very first line. Those videos might be the best glimpse into how Lauren’s creative brain actually works because there isn’t a grand reveal where viewers only see the polished final product. Instead, she lets them see the imperfect part, too. One line becomes another. Shapes begin to connect. A horse, cowgirl, or hat slowly appears on the page. Sometimes, all of it happens with nothing more sophisticated than a Bic pen. Yes, really. People have asked. “It doesn’t matter how expensive you spend on your paint or pens,” Lauren says. “You just kind of have to go for it.”
As it turns out, that philosophy works pretty well outside of art, too.
Lauren had been following Art of the Cowgirl for several years and wanted to attend the event long before her artwork became part of it. She actually considered entering the Cowgirl Art Contest the year before, but that familiar little voice of uncertainty crept in. Oh, I don’t know. So she didn’t. This year, people began tagging Lauren in posts about the contest and leaving comments telling her she needed to enter. Eventually, she decided to listen. “I was like, okay, I’m just gonna do it.”
What had drawn Lauren to Art of the Cowgirl in the first place was much of the same thing she strives for in her own work: originality and community. She loved the idea of artists creating in real time, Western makers and brands gathered together, horses at the center of it all, and women from different corners of the Western industry coming together to celebrate creativity, horsemanship, and the traditions connecting them. “The community and the event itself is just so unique,” Lauren says. “I feel like my artwork is a little bit more unique than others.” It felt like a place where her work belonged. This time, taking the chance paid off. Lauren Chaney was named the 2027 Art of the Cowgirl – Cowgirl Art Contest: Merchandise & Apparel Category winner.
For her winning design, Lauren wanted to walk a careful line between honoring the original Art of the Cowgirl logo and making the piece unmistakably hers. She began by hand-drawing the design, adding her own style and unique elements while preserving the feeling of the original artwork. From there, she brought in color and transformed the hand-drawn piece into the finished digital design. Having recently relocated back to Arizona, inspiration wasn’t hard to find. The finished piece carries the energy of a Western sky with warm, vivid tones, pops of turquoise and plenty of movement. There’s a wild mane, braids, expressive lines and one seriously good cowgirl hat.
“I just wanted it to pop,” Lauren says. “I wanted to be a little bit different.” She also wanted the design to reflect the women, horses, and horsemanship at the heart of Art of the Cowgirl. The result manages to feel familiar and completely new at the same time. It’s Western, but not overly polished. Feminine, but certainly not delicate. Colorful, expressive, authentic, and just a little spicy. In other words, very Lauren.
Perhaps the best part of the story, though, hasn’t happened yet.
The 2027 Art of the Cowgirl will be Lauren’s first time attending the event. She had planned to come the previous year, but when her horse needed surgery, those plans changed. This year, she had already decided she was finally going to make the trip. Then she won the contest. Now, when Lauren walks through Art of the Cowgirl for the first time, she’ll do it surrounded by pieces of something that once existed only inside her imagination. Her winning artwork will become part of the 2027 Art of the Cowgirl experience, appearing on merchandise and keepsakes, including the event’s much-loved wild rags.
For an artist, there’s something surreal about watching an idea travel that far. “It’s a crazy thing to see people wear your artwork,” Lauren says. “From just the thought process in my mind to drawing it on paper or on the digital iPad…it’s just a surreal moment.” And perhaps that’s what makes this particular contest win mean a little more. The pieces carrying Lauren’s design won’t simply leave Art of the Cowgirl as merchandise. They’ll leave as memories. A wild rag tied around a cowgirl’s neck. A piece tucked into a suitcase for the flight home. Something pulled from a closet months or years later that takes her right back to Arizona and a few days spent surrounded by horses, artists, makers and women who understand this way of life.
“My art [gets to] be a part of this year’s experience,” Lauren says. “It really is such an honor.”
There’s something wonderfully full-circle about that. A horse-loving girl who started freelancing in high school, combined her love of photography, design, and drawing, built a business around creating art that looked like no one else’s, and spent years watching Art of the Cowgirl from afar will finally experience it for herself in 2027. Only this time, a little piece of her will already be there, on the wild rags, on the merchandise, and in the hands of cowgirls who will take it home with them.
All because Lauren Chaney did what she does every time she puts pen to paper.
She just went for it.
