Renowned equine artist Orren Marion Mixer, whose portraits of western stock horses are distinctly recognizable, died on April 29 at 87 years old.

Mixer’s celebrity as a well-known western artist started during the 1950s and 1960s. Livestock, particularly horses, became his specialty, and his work graced the covers of Western Horseman, Quarter Horse Journal, Cattleman, and Oklahoma Today. In 1968, the American Quarter Horse Association commissioned Mixer to paint "the ideal American Quarter Horse," and six other breed associations followed suit. He depicted the ideal Pinto, Paint, Palomino, Appaloosa, Buckskin, and Pony of the Americas.

Briefly retired during the 1980s, Mixer resumed his artistic productions in the mid-1990s, working from a studio near Arcadia, Okla. He was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Association Hall of Fame in 1993.

Mixer was born in Oklahoma City in 1920 to Florence Motter and Orren Marion Mixer Sr. After attending public schools, he obtained a scholarship to attend the Kansas City Art Institute from 1938-40.

Mixer worked in graphic arts in New York, Oklahoma City, and Fort Worth, Texas, before moving to San Diego to work in an aircraft manufacturing plant. He returned to Fort Worth in 1943 and joined the U.S. Navy. Stationed in Chicago, he was a visual aids graphic artist.

In his personal time, Mixer painted Western scenes, and his first sales came through a Chicago sporting goods store. Discharged from the service in 1946, he brought his wife, Evelyn Leonard, whom he’d married in 1941, back to Oklahoma, where he built a house and studio near Arcadia/Edmond.

Memorial services for Mixer are pending.