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What: Cowboy golf art, prints of original oil paintings by Russell Houston.

Price: $40-$45 each, signed by the artist. Distribution outlets available from Houston Designs at (800) 776-1594.

As ideas go, this one was right up there with cavity-backed irons and cut-proof golf balls. About five years ago, Kristi Houston spotted a turn-of-the-century photograph of two cowboys playing golf on a desolate tract in southern Arizona, their clubs dangling from the saddles on their horses.

She thought the scene would make a fine subject for her husband, Western artist Russell Houston, especially if he added a twist. Before long, a new art genre was born, and 16,000 prints later, Houston, 44, has carved out a special niche in the golf-art world.

His cowboy golf-art series of eight prints, each telling a story primarily involving two characters, is an exceptional blend of beauty and whimsy. Houston, a graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, lives in the small town of Edgar, Ariz., and spends about half his working time on cowboy golf art, the rest on traditional Western paintings.

Each print blends the rugged scenery of the Southwest with the essence of golf, which, as all golfers know, is that any serene moment with a club in hand will probably soon be followed by disaster. Pending doom is a theme in this series.

Houston often uses two friends--an ample-girthed mule trainer named Charley Coppinger and a sinewy blacksmith named Wayne Ramey--as his models. One is usually about to strike the ball, the other is in the background, where the subplot unfolds.

A sampling:

In “At the End of His Rope,” Ramey balances on a ledge to take a shot as Coppinger peers down from a cliff above. He is holding the rope that is keeping Ramey from from falling to his death . . . or worse, losing his balance and duffing the shot.

In “Water Hazard,” Ramey is a model of concentration over his shot from a ravine, oblivious of an approaching flash flood. His pal’s warning from the rocks behind him goes unheeded.

In “Chip Shot,” Coppinger has coiled his none-too-perfect swing around his six-shooter and Andy Devine-sized belly to swat his ball off a cowpie. His buddy leans against his horse a few yards away, using what apparently served as an all-purpose club to scrape off the bottom of his boot. These boys are always stepping into some kind of trouble.

Prints, in the striking, sun-washed colors of the Southwestern wilderness, range from 17-by-26 inches to 22-by-28. The original paintings have sold for $5,000-$8,000 and buyers are lined up for subsequent efforts, which is fine with Houston.

“I don’t know what I could do to top this,” he says.

Life is like that for the master of the Frederic Remington-Robin Williams school of art.