Roland Gissing was born in Willersey in the county of Worcester, England 1895. Gissing studied art for a few years at George Watson’s College in Edinburgh where he was introduced to the “moving picture”. When he saw the freedom of the western frontier and the world of the cowboy, the North American west became the his dream.

 

Arriving in Calgary, Alberta in the spring of 1913, Gissing spent the next ten years living the life of a cowboy, working on various ranches from the Peace River country in northern British Columbia, all the way down to Mexico.

 

While in Montana, he met the famous cowboy artist, Charlie Russell, who approved of Gissing’s early sketches depicting life on the range. In Nevada he met Will James, the cowboy writer who also encouraged Gissing's pursuits in western art.

 

In 1923 Roland Gissing settled near the Ghost River, west of Cochrane, Alberta. The beauty of the foothills and Rockies had won him over, and his fondness for sketching and drawing pushed him to paint for a living. He had his first solo show in 1929 at the Calgary Public Library in Central Park.

 

Roland Gissing would become one of Alberta’s most recognised artists, best known for his paintings of mountains, farmland and the rolling foothills of southern Alberta.

 

Gissing's work can be found in the collections of Glenbow Museum in Calgary, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts in Edmonton, and the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in Banff, amongst others.