At a glance, no one would think Lisa K Stokes is a cowgirl. She looks more like a fashion model. Actually, Stokes was a high-fashion model for several years before coming to the realization that she is a cowgirl at heart and more comfortable in the saddle that on a runway stage.

Stokes is an extremely talented digital artist and is a guest artist for the “Wild, Wild West Student Art Expo” at the Johnson Center for the Arts through January 2, 2017.

“Lisa is a very high profile Western ‘Cowboy Contemporary’ artist and will be featured in a one-person exhibit at the Johnson Center for the Arts in March/April 2017,” said Vicki Pritchett, JAC executive director. “She very graciously allowed us to exhibit several pieces of her Western art to enhance the Wild, Wild West Student Art Expo.

“We knew there would be large audience to view the student art expo and this would be a unique opportunity to preview Lisa’s artwork in a ‘western’ setting. The response to her work by students and visitors has been remarkable. We are looking forward to having a large body of her work exhibited in the spring.”

Stokes said she was honored to show some of her work along with such talented young artists.

“It was exciting to be a part of the awards ceremony and to get to meet the young artists,” she said.

Stokes grew up in Okeechobee, Florida but she had cowboy blood running through her views.

“My grandfather and his father before him raised cows so I was ranch raised,” she said. “I loved cows and horses and anything and everything that had to do with the ranch. It was in my blood. Ranching was and is my passion.”

Just how it was and why it was that Stokes ventured into high-fashion modeling, she’s not exactly sure. Her roots were deeply embedded on the ranch but she felt the call to something perhaps bigger and more exciting.

She had been riding, roping and barrel racing for years and, somehow, the lure of the big city was stronger than the rope around the saddle horn.

“I’d done all of the Western things growing up and I’d gotten a little bored with it all,” she said. “I was ready to so something else.

The lights along the runway seemed glamorous and exciting and New York was exciting for a while. But the cowboy in Stokes began to show through.

“I was known as the cowgirl in the city,” she said. “At that point in my life, I didn’t know what I wanted but I knew what I didn’t want.”

Stokes realized that she didn’t want the life of a high-fashion model and big city life so she came back south and, what was once a hobby, became a profession.

Stokes could have settled for a success as a professional photography but she was not quite satisfied. So, she found a way to combine photography with her artistic abilities. Today, Stokes is a highly acclaimed digital artist. Her unique Contemporary Cowboy art hangs is in corporate offices and homes all across the country. And, not just in cowboy country but in the metro areas, from New York to Los Angeles.

Stokes shoots her own photos and digitally incorporates the photos and her personal brush strokes into incredible works of art.

Her art is not exactly photos, not painting, but a combination of layered scans on hand-painted acrylic backgrounds, assisted by the magic of computer technology.

Some of Stokes’ artwork is years in the making. She carefully selects the photo images so it often takes time and travel and a bit of luck to find the perfect windmill or rusty truck or weathered board to convey the cowboy message.

“Lisa’s artwork is not like anything else you will see,” Pritchett said. “She captures the Western Heritage in such a way that it brings out the cowboy in all of us.”

Lisa K Stokes now divides her time between Weatherford, Texas, and Pike Road, Alabama.

“I love Alabama,” she said. “I’m living my dream.”

And, she captures her dream exuberantly in her art.