For nearly three decades, the Calgary Stampede’s Western Art Show has doggedly clung to traditional western-themed art depicting life on the Prairies. Bronze statues, prairie landscapes and Norman Rockwell-like paintings of cowboys and their faithful steeds carpet the 200,000-square-foot area inside the BMO Centre’s (formerly the Roundup Centre) halls in which it’s held.

While these forms have served the show well over its 28-year history — drawing an average 50,000 people per day over its 10-day run — it is arguably not representative of today’s western artist or modern western life. It may be a tradition, but tradition can become habit, and habit, wrote Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, “is a great deadener.”

So, last September, the Stampede rubber-stamped a new artist residency program — The Artists’ Ranch Project — designed to breathe new life into the exhibit and open the door for discussion and debate as to the meaning of western art.

It’s an idea, says project spokesperson Donna Andersen, that was long overdue. Though she concedes it may not be to everyone’s sensibility. “There will be compliments,” she says. “But there will also be arrows.”

It was a figurative arrow aimed at the Stampede for its perceived exclusion of contemporary artists that spurred the art show’s committee chair Kim Morrison to initiate the project.

“It’s all about discussion, being proud of what we produce (and) getting past the antiquated, romantic notion of what life in Alberta is,” says Morrison, whose Stampede lineage can be traced back to her famous great-grandfather A.E. Cross — one of the Big Four cattlemen who founded the “Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth.” “There are lots of people who don’t even think that western themed art is art at all.”

The five-person committee overseeing the project whittled a list of well-established artists for the inaugural exhibit down to four: Lisa Brawn, Audrey Mabee, Lisa Sobkowich and Errol Lee Fullen.

“Part of the reason for choosing us is that it really might not fit in,” says Fullen, fresh from a residency at The Banff Centre. “How my art varies from the other art there is going to be one of its strengths. If it’s not for everybody, that’s OK. Horses aren’t for everybody.”

Over two bitterly cold weekends last fall, the foursome scoured the relatively desolate 20,500 acres of the Calgary Stampede Ranch — located 50 km south of Hanna — for inspiration. “It was no Ponderosa,” quips Fullen, a former Alberta College of Art and Design and University of Calgary art instructor. “It’s like a wild horse station in the middle of nowhere. The only land marker around is a big coal-burning power plant and a strip mine. It’s like baldhead prairie.”

Yet even in a shorn prairie setting, inspiration sprung forth in ways as varied as each artist’s own style: Mabee’s whimsically, stylized figures of bicycle-riding cowboys and prairie mermaids. Fullen’s raw and rough abstract acrylic series Spirits of the West. Sobkowich’s intricate glasswork and mindscape paintings. Brawn’s pop art portraits of wild birds and RCMP officers carved into wood.

In all, the artists submitted 65 pieces to the committee, which then selected 27 to be initially displayed. The remaining pieces will be added should the first ones sell. The group manages to push the notion of traditional western art to the edge, but still had the wherewithal to rein it in before going over the edge.

“I have to be responsible to the geographic population,” acknowledges Brawn, who carved her Warhol-like images from wood salvaged from the historic 100 Block Building downtown with Paul Bunyan-like precision. Her series of wild birds impressed not only the show’s judges, but the City of Calgary as well, which lined seven of its bridges with banners bearing the colourful birds last February.

The Stampede’s decision to change with the times shows a willingness to broaden its appeal and hopefully attract more people and artists, says Brawn. “Calgary’s not like Montreal where it’s saturated with artists and galleries,” she says. “But there is still a great appreciation here for art.”

“It doesn’t have to be a roaring success, but it has to be successful,” says Morrison. “If we can cover our costs the first year that’ll be good because then (the Stampede) will support it again in the future.”

Andersen says and that the Stampede has designated the Cross Ranch to be used by the next round of artists for the 2010 exhibit.