Howard Terpning is known as, 'The Storyteller of the Native American.' He is one of America's most respected Western artists, his work typically signifies consistent technical skill, rare sensitivity and insight. Terpning was born in Oak Park, Illinois and educated at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the American Academy of Art. He had an eight-year apprenticeship in commercial art in Chicago and then moved to New York City where he spent twenty five years as an illustrator, creating work for several publications including Time, Newsweek, Reader's Digest, Field and Stream, and Cosmopolitan. His movie assignments included, “The Guns of Navarone,” “Dr. Zhivago,” “A Man for All Seasons,” “The Sound Of Music” and “Cleopatra.” At the height of his vocation in the mid-1970s Terpning decided to leave New York and head west, to Tucson, Arizona. Within a mere three years after this move in 1979 he was elected to the National Academy of Western Art and that same year, by unanimous vote, to the prestigious Cowboy Artists of America, an exclusive group of male painters dedicated to western genre. Since that time, Terpning has served as a previous President and member on the Board of Directors of the Cowboy Artists of America Museum. His paintings focus on Native American people of the Great Plains during the 19th century and have earned numerous prestigious awards including about two dozen gold and silver medals from the CAA. In 1998, the Phoenix Art Museum acquired one of his CAA entry paintings, Offerings to the Little People, valued at the record price of $260,000. He works in a large studio attached to his home and usually keeps a painting schedule of working all day, six days a week. Terpning lives with his family in Arizona, and his daughter, Susan Terpning, has also become a successful artist.