Long before Kym Day’s wonderfully offbeat Western world found its way onto this year’s Rocktoberfest invitation, one of her paintings was already hanging in the Texas Counter Fitters showroom.

The connection dates back to Richardson’s Cottonwood Art Festival, where a painting of a pajama-clad girl riding horseback caught the eye of TCF founder Andrew Gilbert. It has hung in the showroom ever since.

This year, the timing seemed especially right to bring Day’s work into the spotlight. Rocktoberfest is going a little bit country, pairing its rock roots with a stronger Western sound and feel. Her paintings—with their horses and cowgirls, Texas undercurrent, bold color and sly sense of humor—fit that direction perfectly.

And then there’s the longhorn.

Featured on this year’s invitation and poster, he’s stretched out beside a red-checkered picnic spread laden with watermelon, fruit and a birthday cake. Because apparently even a Texas longhorn deserves a proper celebration. It’s exactly the kind of beautifully painted, slightly off-kilter scene that makes Day’s work so much fun.

That sensibility has become a signature for the Texas-born artist, whose work reimagines the American West through memory, fantasy and a healthy dose of the unexpected. Now based in Greenville, South Carolina, she shows nationally, creating meticulously rendered scenes where horses descend from starry skies, cowgirls possess improbable strength and animals occasionally take part in very human rituals.

And that Rocktoberfest longhorn? Its story goes all the way back to Day’s childhood.

“When I was a kid, I would arrange all my toy horses and livestock around picnics and birthday parties,” Day says. The painting is drawn directly from the way she played when she was four or five. “I like to imagine that, you know, animals want to celebrate their birthdays too.”

Texas, Reimagined

Day, a sixth-generation Texan, moved away when she was young and spent much of her childhood moving from place to place. Texas remained a touchstone, particularly through visits to family and memories of her grandfather’s lodge.

“I really wanted this sense of home,” she says. “Anything Western, anything Texan, has always pulled me.”

But distance also gave her permission to invent. Because she left Texas so young, she says, her imagination had to fill in the gaps. “It got more and more fantastical.”

Creativity came early. Day’s mother is an artist, and the house was filled with books on Western masters. Day eventually earned a BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art, followed by an MFA in sculpture from Clemson University, before finding her way back to the canvas.

Her subjects may be fanciful, but there’s considerable thought behind how they get there. Day collects photographs—sometimes holding onto an image for years—then digitally builds photo collages, combining figures, animals, landscapes and skies until the composition feels right. At any given time, she says, she may have 20 paintings in progress.

Beauty Meets Absurdity

Day describes what she does as finding “utter joy in merging beauty with absurdity.” The balance didn’t happen immediately.

Her earlier work, she says, felt a little lost. The shift came when she stopped worrying about “stuffy art world perception” and gave herself permission to embrace the playful, dreamy and occasionally goofy ideas that interested her.

That decision was liberating. “I started painting exactly what I wanted to paint,” says Day — advice she gives to other artists.  

Her favorite collection? Lo Mein Western, a body of work Day says “just flowed” once she made that shift. “I think it also embodies my sense of humor perfectly. It’s just so wacky. It makes you look twice.”

Upcoming work should be equally offbeat. Day is envisioning cowboys pulling espresso shots on the prairie as curious horses look on, along with wildly leaping cowgirls in highly feminine clothes—although some, she admits, may actually be falling rather than leaping.

Which makes a longhorn celebrating beside a birthday cake seem perfectly reasonable.

And for a Rocktoberfest heading West this year, that unexpected twist feels exactly right.

Get your complimentary tickets for Rocktoberfest 2026, Thursday, October 22, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.