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Known for his artwork
dbryce@journalnet.com
POCATELLO -- Golden Millward earned his moniker, the "One-Eyed Cowboy," the hard way. Millward lost his right eye when he was mugged and severely beaten outside a fast-food restaurant in Phoenix more than four decades ago. But the injury didn't keep him off the road -- he continued his career as a truck driver and honed his lifelong love of painting.
To compensate for a loss of depth perception, Millward used shadows to maneuver his truck and to provide depth in his paintings. He recently saw a piece of art he created as an 8-year-old boy hanging in a store window in Pocatello.
"I've always painted," Millward said. His illustrations appear in a number of books, including "Basketmaker Indians II" by Verl Frehner. Millward was also commissioned to depict "Cannibal Boone," a legendary Western character, who allegedly killed two of his companions while snowed in at Montpelier in the late 1800s and ate them.
"(Boone) ate the men instead of the horses," Millward said. Millward said there are no known photographs of Boone, so when local physician Thomas McDevitt commissioned him to paint the man-eating horse-trader, he used photos of two of Boone's brothers to compile the work.
"McDevitt looked at it and said, that's him, that's Boone," Millward said. He and his wife, Sandy, own a home in Scenic, Ariz., where they spend the winter.
The couple have been married 38 years and have a combined family of nine children, 25 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Millward spent Sunday working on an acrylic painting of two draft horses grazing in the field. In the background the remnants of a horse-drawn plow rest, overgrown with grass and vegetation.
Millward said he's painted with oil for most of his career, but after taking a class with renowned artist Jerry Varnel, who's allergic to oil paint, he switched mediums. "I like the color that I get with oils, but acrylic dries faster, I can paint faster," he said.
Millward travels to four or five shows a year and most of his sales are prints. His original paintings start at about $5,000. The prints are produced by Mountain West Books in Provo, Utah, Master Lab in Salt Lake City and FOV, also of Provo, using a process known as giclee. Originally from Wyoming, Millward moved to Pocatello as a child. His father, Abb Millward, owned and operated Millward Meat Packing, and he started butchering and milking cows at the ripe old age of 8. He said his many years spent in the meat packing plant enhanced his art.
"I've taken apart millions of animals, I know how each muscle should fit together," Millward said. At age 16, he headed to Arizona with the rodeo and competed in the bareback and saddle-bronc events. "One of the reasons I left was because my dad tried to work me to death," Millward said. Eventually, he and Sandy returned to Pocatello and took over his family's business and went on to open Golden K Recycling, a cooking oil recycling service. "I wish I would have hung on to the recycling plant, they're doing very well," he joked. After his retirement, Millward became a full-time artist, but said he doesn't consider what he does work. "I love it, it's something I always wanted to do," he said. Millward, who's quick to note that despite the injury to his eye, he's never been in an accident, said when he's not painting, he and Sandy still love to travel. The couple just returned form a trip to West Yellowstone. When the temperature drops, the Millwards will head south and he'll continue to paint. "There are a lot of people who really like what I do," he said. By Debbie Bryce
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