Veryl’s career began as a wildlife painter in the early 1970’s. Sculpture was initially a means to educate herself about anatomy. The three-dimensional challenge ended up dominating her work throughout the late 1990’s while living in Santa Fe. A Colorado native, Veryl and her husband returned to Colorado in 2006, where the dramatic landscape inspired her return to oil painting.

Veryl completed over 200 sculptures and 20 life size or larger monuments. In 1986, “Paint Mare and Filly” was installed at the National Cowboy and Heritage Museum. Veryl’s love of horses inspired other equine monuments. The most notable is “The Day the Wall Came Down,” a seven-ton bronze sculpture consisting of five larger than life-size bronze horses jumping over the fallen Berlin Wall. The two “sister monuments” are located in Berlin, Germany and the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library.

Among the many honors received during her fifty-year career, Veryl was inducted into The National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 2016 for a lifetime of representing the American West in Art. More recent honors include having “No Bed of Roses” chosen as the purchase award during the 2022 Cowgirl Up exhibit. Cowboys and Indians magazine featured her work in November 2023.

Veryl still works almost daily in her spacious barn studio, surrounded by her horses, burro, and dogs. The past twelve years, she has explored the untold roles sled dogs played in America’s history. Sixteen of these paintings are included in the recently published book, “The History of Sled Dogs in North America.” Five paintings and one bronze will begin a museum tour in 2024 to bring these untold stories to audiences throughout the country.