By Chance

This cowboy artist is equally devoted to painting and rodeo.

- Lauren Feldman

Cowboy artist Chance Hays comes by his talents honestly—his father was a professional bulldogger and tie-down roper and his mother was an art teacher. However, the original perspective and incredible drive he applies to pursuing his dual passions of art and rodeo is entirely his own.

Hays, 31, grew up in a small town in southwest Kansas. From an early age, he was equally devoted to both art and cowboying, spending just as much time with a rope in his hand as a pencil and paintbrush. He pursued his interests into college and graduate school, competing in college rodeo for Panhandle State University and Oklahoma State while picking up a handful of degrees, eventually earning his master of fine arts from West Texas A&M University.

Breaking into the professional art world and actively redoing are difficult endeavors by themselves, but to do both at the same time, as a college student no less, requires a work ethic that eludes most 20-somethings.