‘Its All About Having That Touch’

“I’m geared to winning the rodeos, painting live, and really being a real cowboy,” says artist and competitive roper Bradley Chance Hays. And that’s exactly what his life has looked like so far.

Hays has been pursuing rodeo and art since he was a child growing up in Oklahoma. He started training in bull riding and roping when he was about 12 years old, which was also about the same time he started seeing art as a possible career path.

“I illustrated a children’s book called ‘Dragonfly,’ and it was published by Ozark Publishing out of Arkansas,” Hays says. “It was a national competition where you illustrate and write your own book, and it’s in the Library of Congress. After illustrating that book and then finishing it and getting it ready for publishing, I really learned a lot by that process at an early age.”

Read the full article in the March/April 2025 issue.