Veryl Goodnight Biography

A Colorado native, Veryl’s career started as a wildlife painter in the early 1970’s. She began sculpting to educate herself about anatomy. Sculpture then dominated her career throughout the late 1900’s while she and her husband, Roger Brooks, lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Their 2006 move back to Colorado intensified her desire to return to oil painting.

Veryl has completed over 200 sculptures and 20 life size or larger monuments. All of these works have reflected her Western roots. The most notable is “The Day The Wall Came Down,” a seven-ton bronze sculpture consisting of five larger than life size horses jumping over the fallen Berlin Wall. The United States Air Force delivered this monument to Berlin, Germany in 1998. A sister casting is installed at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library in Texas

Veryl’s work has been profiled in many books and her work has been repeatedly featured in all major American art magazines. “No Turning Back – the Art of Veryl Goodnight” was published in 2011 to correspond with a forty-year retrospective at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 2016 Veryl was inducted into The National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Forth Worth, Texas in recognition of lifetime of representing the American West in Art.

Veryl and Roger live in the mountains of Southwest Colorado, between Durango and Mesa Verde National Park. The dramatic landscape, abundant wildlife, and the ranching community provide endless inspiration for both sculpture and painting.