Image courtesy of Dane Howard Studio
Tennessee artist Dane Howard is bringing cowboy history, local landscapes, and immersive storytelling together in TN COWBOY, a new exhibition now on view at Hayes House at The Park at Harlinsdale Farm in Franklin, TN.
Presented in partnership with Friends of Franklin Parks, the exhibit explores what Howard describes as the lesser-known origins of cowboy culture in Tennessee. Rather than focusing only on the western image of cowboys, TN COWBOY looks at the Tennessee horsemen, cattlemen, and cattlewomen shaped by farmland, river valleys, rugged terrain, music, labor, and a deep connection to the land.
The exhibition opened with a public reception on Wednesday, July 8, and will remain on view through September 1. Its setting at Harlinsdale Farm adds a meaningful local connection, placing Howard’s work inside one of Franklin’s most recognizable equestrian landmarks.
Inside Dane Howard’s TN COWBOY Exhibit at Hayes House
TN COWBOY is displayed in an intimate gallery room inside Hayes House. Visitors enter the historic home and find a collection that seems to echo the land just outside the windows: open fields, fences, barns, horses, and the shifting Tennessee sky.
One of the first things visitors notice in Howard’s work is the sky.
Across Howard’s paintings, the skies are expansive, detailed, and full of movement. Some stretch across open fields in soft evening light. Others feel charged with the energy that comes before or after a storm. Rendered with striking realism, they draw the viewer in before the eye moves to the scenes unfolding below.
For Howard, the skies are not just background. “I came here and fell in love immediately with the skies,” he said. Some of the most beautiful skies, he noted, appear in moments of transition, especially before or after a storm. “The sky is so fleeting,” Howard said. “Any one of these skies, they’re minutes, seconds.”
The opening reception brought guests into that landscape. People of all ages moved through the room, pausing in front of paintings and taking in the details. Howard spent the reception speaking with visitors, answering questions, and pointing out elements in the paintings, including scenes inspired directly by Harlinsdale Farm.
Image courtesy of Dane Howard Studio
The Story Behind TN COWBOY and Tennessee Cowboy Culture
For Howard, TN COWBOY began with a question about Tennessee’s place in the larger story of cowboy culture.
“The West gets a lot of credit for the cowboy,” Howard said. “But what happens here in Tennessee?”
That question became a starting point for the collection. Rather than treating the cowboy as a figure tied only to wide-open western plains, Howard looks at a version shaped by Tennessee’s own landscape: farms, river valleys, ridgelines, livestock, music, and the daily work of people connected to the land.
As he researched, Howard said he was drawn to the diverse history of post-Civil War cattlemen and cattlewomen. The paintings consider the people who worked with horses and livestock, moved through rural landscapes, and carried stories that are often less visible in the popular image of cowboy culture.
One piece in the collection, Carry the Colors, reflects that post-Civil War period and the complexity of people coming together after conflict. Howard described the painting as a way to imagine riders who may have once been on opposing sides finding themselves on the same trail, singing folk songs and moving through the landscape.
That idea runs through the exhibit. TN COWBOY is not just about the cowboy as an icon. It is about land, labor, memory, and the people whose stories helped shape Tennessee’s rural and equestrian identity.
Dane Howard’s Process: Technology, Photography, and Oil Painting
Howard is a multidisciplinary artist with more than 25 years of experience in technology and design, but his roots in painting go back decades.
As a young artist in California, he studied design in Pasadena and spent time learning from painters and illustrators. He also painted outdoors, drawn to plein air painting and the long tradition of observing landscapes directly.
Since moving to College Grove in 2020, Howard has spent time driving through Middle Tennessee, collecting images of fields, barns, black fences, hay bales, and changing light. Many of the scenes in TN COWBOY are inspired by places within a short drive of his home, including the land and structures at Harlinsdale Farm.
His career in technology has shaped the way he thinks about process, medium, and change.
“I’ve been a designer for over 25 years, mainly in tech,” Howard said. “Tech is a medium that’s always changing.”
Painting, by comparison, has remained grounded in many of the same practices for centuries. Howard is drawn to that contrast between the fast-moving digital world and the slower, more tactile process of painting.
TN COWBOY brings those two worlds together. From across the room, some of the paintings have a striking realism. Up close, the texture of the paint becomes more visible, especially in the clouds, highlights, and areas of changing light.
“It’s photographic, and then it’s digital, and then I transfer it to canvas and finish it in oil,” Howard said. “It’s really a blend between the technical and analog.”
How the TN COWBOY Audio Tour Adds to the Exhibit
TN COWBOY also includes an audio experience, giving visitors another way to engage with the paintings. Guests scan a single main QR code that takes them to an audio page. From there, they enter the number of the painting they are viewing and listen to the story connected to that piece.
The audio is not simply a description of what is on the canvas. Howard created narratives for the paintings, adding imagined histories, emotional context, and in some cases, stories told from the point of view of the subjects themselves.
In Ridgeline, for example, the audio expands the painting through multiple perspectives. A curator’s narration draws attention to the dramatic sky, the silhouetted fence line, the barn in shadow, and the rhythm of livestock along the horizon. Other voices imagine the scene from the perspective of people within that world, including a wrangler remembering the long work of moving cattle and a cook watching the day end from the valley below.
That added layer changes the way visitors experience the work. A landscape becomes more than a view of a ridge, barn, and evening sky. Through the audio, the painting opens into a story about work, weather, memory, and the final light of the day.
For Howard, the audio component brings together several parts of his practice: traditional painting, digital tools, storytelling, and audience experience.
“It’s a neat storytelling, immersion capability that I’m trying out with this show,” Howard said.
At the opening reception, guests moved from piece to piece, listening to the stories and then looking at the paintings with new context. The experience invited visitors to spend more time with each scene and consider the stories behind the figures, landscapes, and symbols in the work.
Hayes House, Harlinsdale Farm, and Franklin’s Art History
TN COWBOY is on view inside Hayes House, a restored historic home at The Park at Harlinsdale Farm that has its own connection to local art.
Friends of Franklin Parks regularly uses Hayes House as a rotating gallery space, giving visitors new reasons to return to the historic property. Katie Murphy, Communications and Outreach Manager for Friends of Franklin Parks, said exhibits like TN COWBOY help expand how people experience the house.
“I think guests can kind of see a different side to the house that we don’t usually showcase, which is the artwork,” Murphy said.
Art has also been part of the house’s history. According to Friends of Franklin Parks, Hayes House became an art studio in the mid-1990s for the JGP Artists, a local group named for teacher Juanita Greene Parks. Barbara Harlin, a member of the group, suggested Hayes House as a studio, and the artists continued finding inspiration at Harlinsdale for 19 years.
With TN COWBOY, Hayes House continues that connection between art, land, and community. The setting also adds meaning to Howard’s work. Harlinsdale Farm is closely tied to Franklin’s equestrian history, open land, and preservation efforts, all themes that connect naturally with TN COWBOY.
“What they do is they preserve the land,” Howard said. “What I try to do in my pieces is visually preserve the land.”
The timing of the TN COWBOY exhibit also connects to The Round Up at Harlinsdale, the annual rodeo event taking place July 10 and 11 at The Park at Harlinsdale Farm.
“We try to base our rotating galleries either timely, like for the rodeo, or mission-based,” Murphy said. “We’re trying to breathe new life into the gallery, and this is one way that we can do that.”
The partnership also extends beyond the gallery walls. Howard is donating his original painting, Gait of Freedom, to Friends of Franklin Parks for Raise the Roofs, the organization’s annual fundraiser on August 22 supporting preservation efforts at The Park at Harlinsdale Farm.
Image courtesy of Dane Howard Studio
Where to See TN COWBOY and What Comes Next
TN COWBOY is free and open to the public at Hayes House at The Park at Harlinsdale Farm, 331 Franklin Road in Franklin. The exhibit will remain on view through September 1, giving visitors a chance to experience Howard’s paintings, explore the audio tour, and see how Tennessee landscapes, cowboy history, technology, and Harlinsdale Farm’s equestrian legacy come together inside the restored Hayes House.
The exhibit also serves as a preview of a larger collection Howard plans to show later this year in downtown Franklin. Howard said he will have an upstairs gallery space at John Henry’s new location on 3rd Avenue. The building is currently being restored, and the future gallery is expected to include around 20 additional paintings connected to this series.
“I’m seeing progress, and there’s light at the end of the tunnel in terms of the gallery space,” Howard said.
John Henry is a jewelry brand with roots dating back to a New Mexico trading post in 1938. Its focus on handcrafted pieces, silver, turquoise, and Western-inspired design fits naturally with the themes Howard explores in TN COWBOY.
The downtown gallery will allow the story introduced at Hayes House to continue, expanding the collection beyond the preview now on view at Harlinsdale Farm.
To learn more about Howard’s work, visit Dane Howard Studio.
