Arizona Artist Ready for Small Works, Great Wonders

ARIZONA ARTIST READY FOR SMALL WORKS, GREAT WONDER

Sedona, Arizona, Master Artist Curt Walters is well-known for his grandiose paintings of the Grand Canyon. This Fall, however, Walters will have the opportunity to think smaller...

The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City will present the Small Works, Great Wonders Winter Art Sale. All featured artwork measures no more than 18" x 20" unframed.

"Morning's Last Shadows" oil 8x6 $3600
©2010 by Curt Walters

Walters will show three oil paintings there. "Morning's Last Shadow" measures a mere 8" x 6" while both "Season's First Color" and "A Moment of Sun" measure 12" x 12"

Walters was honored with the coveted Prix de West Award at The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in 2007. He  has also won three Nona Jean Hulsey Buyers' Choice Awards and two Frederic Remington Paintings Awards at the Oklahoma show since 1997.

The artist was recently the recipient of the first Patron's Choice Award at the Salmagundi Club's American Masters Show in New York City. Quest for the West, at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, declared Walters the Artist of Distinction in 2008. That same year, the Autry National Center in Los Angeles paid tribute with the Trustees' Purchase Award.

In addition to these shows, The Rendevouz will pair Walters with sculptor Veryl Goodnight next year for a special two-person show at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

His work is found in museums and public and private collections throughout the world, including those of the Forbes Magazine Gallery, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the estate of Robert Urich, astronaut Frank Borman, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and the Leanin' Tree Museum.

His paintings are available at the Trailside Galleries of Scottsdale, Arizona, and Jackson, Wyoming, the Claggett/Rey Gallery in Vail, Colorado, and in Santa Fe at the Nedra Matteucci Galleries. Original artwork and prints are also available through his online gallery at www.curtwalters.com.

To learn more about the Small Works, Great Wonders exhibit or the National Cowboy Museum, please visit http://www.nationalcowboymuseum.org/events/swgw/default.aspx.

Small Works, Great Wonders, 2010 Winter Art Sale

The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum will host another wonderful Small Works, Great Wonders Art Show and Sale on November 18, 2010.

Curt Walters is only one of the many artists to be showing his work during this exhibit. This show features paintings and sculptures by the famed artists invited by the museum to attend. Art will go on display November 12th and the show will run through December 5th.

The work Curt will be showing is a fantastic display of newly turned aspen trees called "Season's first Color," an oil, 12" x 12" and priced at $5,500. The second is a stunning "A Moment of Sun" as it peeks so sleepily from an overcast afternoon. Also an oil, it measures at 12" x 12" and is priced at $5,800. The last of Curt's entries is "Morning's Last Shadows" - a moment quickly lost to the hight of the afternoon, is a small but amazing at only 8" x 6." This last oil is priced at $3600.

For more information on Curt Walters and his work, please visit his website or Facebook Fanpage.

"Season's first Color" oil 12x12 $5,500©2010 by Curt Walters

"A Moment of Sun" oil 12x12 $5,800.
©2010 by Curt Walters

"Morning's Last Shadows" oil 8x6 $3600
©2010 by Curt Walters

LOCAL MASTER ARTIST WINS BIG SHOW

The Arborists' Reward • 28" x 28"

Curt Walters of Sedona, Arizona, has been honored again at the Eiteljorg Museum's Quest for the West art show. The Master Artist was pleasantly surprised with the Henry Farny Award for Best Painting, for "The Arborists' Reward."

The 28" x 28" oil painting came to life at Garland's Oak Creek Lodge in Sedona this past Spring. Walters' has made it his mission to paint as many of the old Sedona homesteads and orchards as possible before they are gone.

For more than a decade, Walters has been known as the "Greatest Living Grand Canyon Artist." However, this award for a non-Canyon piece reflects a growing appreciation for his other subjects.

Held in Indianapolis, Indiana, the annual art show featured "Moment and Monument" last year, a special one-man, 20-year retrospective of Walters' work, hosted specially for his 2008 Victor Higgins Artist of Distinction Award.

Walters has won a total of six awards from Quest for the West, in addition to six from the Prix de West show at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, which includes the Prix de West Purchase Award. He has won Patrons' Choice Awards from the Salmagundi Club's American Masters, Denver's Artists of America, and Masters of the American West at the Autry National Center in L.A., where he was also the recipient of the Trustee's Purchase Award.

Next year, Walters and sculptor Veryl Goodnight will team up for "The Rendezvous," a special two-person show to be held at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

His work is found in museums and public and private collections throughout the world, including the Forbes Magazine Gallery, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, astronaut Frank Borman, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford, and the Leanin' Tree Museum.

His paintings are available at the Trailside Galleries of Scottsdale, Arizona, and Jackson, Wyoming, the Claggett/Rey Gallery in Vail, Colorado, and at his online gallery at curtwalters.com.

10 Years of Conservation Through Art

October of 2004 marks a major milestone for artist Curt Walters of Sedona, Arizona: 10 years of successful crusading against pollution in and around the Grand Canyon. While honing the skills of a plein-aire impressionist through the ‘70s and ‘80s, his passion for location painting and strict attention to detail inadvertently captured the worsening air quality over the whole of the Colorado Plateau. Concerned, Walters was moved to action.

Finding worthy ideals with the Grand Canyon Trust, Walters utilized his forte and put brush to canvas for their cause. In October of 1994, the Trust chose the artist to create a commemorative painting for the 75th anniversary of Grand Canyon as a National Park, accepted on behalf of the National Park Service by Robert Arenberger, then Superintendent of Grand Canyon, and attended by Bruce Babbitt. Walters then licensed the 30” x 60” oil-on-canvas, titled “National Treasure,” for reproduction on everything from postcards to posters, and donated all proceeds from park sales directly to the Trust. He has also pledged a percentage from each sale of Grand Canyon images to the organization. To date, his contributions have garnered over half a million dollars for the Grand Canyon Trust.

In addition to financial and artistic donations, he also gives freely of his time, organizing educational forums and fundraising trips among his peers. In 1999, Walters invited 14 fellow artists on an 8-day, 88-mile painting excursion through Grand Canyon on the Colorado River. Dozens of the 200-plus pieces produced were contributed to the Trust after a special showing at the Forbes Magazine Galleries in New York, bringing in well over $200,000 for the conservation organization. In June of this year, Curt Walters and Deborah Tuck, President of the Grand Canyon Foundation, shared the podium at the Prix de West Art Exhibition and Sale in Oklahoma City, giving a speech and video presentation about the conservation of all the park’s natural and historic resources. Walters serves as a boardmember of the Grand Canyon Foundation alongside the likes of Sen. John McCain.

At this year’s Prix de West, Walters’ 48” x 78” “Apache Walls” earned him top honors, winning the coveted Frederic Remington Painting Award. He has also been the recipient of many Buyers’ Choice Awards from Prix de West, Denver’s Artists of America and the Autry Museum’s Masters of the American West shows.

Though best known as a Western landscape impressionist--in fact, he is often labeled as “the greatest living Grand Canyon artist”--Walters takes time each year to stretch his artistic legs and enjoy painting holidays all over the Pacific Islands, Europe and the Middle East. Most recently, he revisited the Forbes’ Chateau de Balleroy in Normandy, France.

Walters’ Grand Canyon and international paintings can be found at the Trailside Galleries of Scottsdale, AZ and Jackson, WY, where the artist has been represented now for 25 years. He will unveil his newest masterpiece at the Scottsdale gallery this Saturday, the 23rd of October. Other galleries include the Altermann Galleries in Santa Fe, NM, Pitzer’s of Carmel, Carmel, CA, and in Hilton Head, SC at the Morris Galleries. Some of the artist’s avid collectors are Christopher Forbes, Frank Borman, Kareem Abdul Jabar, Kathie Lee Gifford and the late Robert Urich.

For more information on Curt and his upcoming events, please visit the website.

Curt Walters Headed to Prix de West in June

Master Artist Curt Walters will make his 14th appearance at Prix de West, the annual art exposition and sale held at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. The show starts on Friday, June 11 and runs through September 6, 2010.
Walters will show four pieces while there. This year he is including New Garden Hollyhocks (28" x 22"), Winter's Eloquent Solitude (40" x 60"), A Memorable Cast (36" x 36") and the beautiful Guilding the Altar (18" x 14").
He will also deliver a special seminar, "Adventures in Plein Air Painting." It will feature a history of plein air and the artists who have influenced Walters, video and pictures of his artwork and travels, and a "mini" art lesson that covers the vital elements of both studio and on-location painting.
Walters was honored with the coveted Prix de West Award in 2007, and has won 3 Nona Jean Hulsey Buyers' Choice Awards and two Frederic Remington Paintings Awards in Oklahoma since 1997.

The artist was recently the recipient of the first Patron's Choice Award at the Salmagundi Club's American Masters Show in New York City. Quest for the West, at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, declared Walters the Artist of Distinction in 2008. That same year, the Autry National Center in Los Angeles paid tribute with the Trustees' Purchase Award.
In September, Walters will be part of a special show to benefit the new Visitor Center at Mesa Verde, Colorado. Sculptor Veryl Goodnight is also contributing to the show. Goodnight and Walters will be paired next year for The Rendevouz, a two-person show at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
His work is found in museums and public and private collections throughout the world, including the Forbes Magazine Gallery, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the estate of Robert Urich, astronaut Frank Borman, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and the Leanin' Tree Museum. His paintings are available at the Trailside Galleries of Scottsdale, Arizona, and Jackson, Wyoming, the Claggett/Rey Gallery in Vail, Colorado, and at his online gallery at curtwalters.com.

Winter's Eloquent Solitude (40" x 60")
A Memorable Cast (36" x 36")	New Garden Hollyhocks (28" x 22")	Guilding the Altar (18" x 14")

Top-Award Winning Artist Returns to Autry

Curt Walters, the most distinguished landscape artist of our time, is gearing up for the first major Western Art show of the year, the 12th annual Masters of the American West Fine Art Exhibition and Sale.  Walters will be on hand at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles for the opening weekend events, beginning on Saturday, February 7, 2009, at 10:00am.

The artist first showed at the Masters show in 1999, when he was thrilled to receive the Patrons' Choice Award.  At last year's show, Walters was honored with the Trustee Purchase Award.  The winning piece, "Splendid Turmoil," is now a part of the Museum's permanent collection.

Walters will showcase four pieces this year, including a massive 50" x 80" oil-on-canvas, "Bright Angel Point."  One of his signature Grand Canyon pieces, this work was stirred to life by a weeklong painting hike at the North Rim of Grand Canyon.  In a rare move, the artist decided to include the field study of the same piece among his submissions.


For more than a decade, Walters has been an integral part of Western Art's Big 3 shows, Masters of the American West, Prix de West in Oklahoma City, and the Quest for the West show in Indianapolis.  In that time, he has won the Prix de West Purchase Award, an unprecedented double-win of the Frederic Remington Award in 2004 and 2005, six Patrons'/Buyers' Choice Awards, the Victor Higgins Work of Distinction Award, and the Artist of Distinction Award, among others.  The Artist of Distinction Award is celebrated with a special 90-day, one man show to be held at the Eitlejorg Museum in Indianapolis this September.

For more information about the Masters of the American West show or the Autry Museum, go to http://www.autrynationalcenter.org/masters2009/.

To view the Awards and Honors Curt has recieved over the years, please view his Picasa Photo Albums here.

Continuing an unprecedented decade, artist Curt Walters of Sedona, Arizona has won 2 more medals on Sunday, June 10th, from the Prix de West Art Exhibition and Sale, the western art genre’s most prestigious show. This pair brings Walters’ total to a staggering 6 -- and only one other artist has won more than three since 1995.

In years past, Walters has twice won the Nona Jean Hulsey Buyers’ Choice Award and an historic back-to-back win of the Frederic Remington Award for exceptional artistic merit, but this year he took home top honors with the Prix de West Purchase Award. More remarkably, the decision was unanimous among the judges. Walters was also bestowed with a third Nona Jean Hulsey Buyers’ Choice Award -- again, more than any other artist in the museum’s history. Walters was greeted with a five minute standing ovation when the announcement was made.

“Spring’s Caprice,” a 36” x 36” oil-on-canvas, was the Purchase Award winner, a rendition of Bright Angel Canyon from the South rim of Grand Canyon, near Maricopa Point. Walters has been known as the “greatest living Grand Canyon artist” for the past ten years, an honor he carries with a great sense of pride.

The Grand Canyon is more than just a place to set up an easel, however; Walters believes in giving back to Mother Nature, too. Only a week before the Prix de West show, Walters, as a board member, hosted a special fundraising dinner for the Grand Canyon Foundation. An adamant supporter of the Foundation as well as the Grand Canyon Trust, two groups instrumental to the preservation and maintenance of Arizona’s beloved national park, Walters passionately raises awareness in addition to hundreds of thousands of dollars for these organizations.

Walters was presented with the Nona Jean Hulsey Award for “Ra’s Domain,” a massive 60” x 90” canvas that also features the Grand Canyon. It was Prix de West’s largest work submitted this year, capturing the famous Tower of Ra.

“Spring’s Caprice” will be the artist’s second addition to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum’s permanent collection. The first piece, “Snow Flurries Over the Rim,” was inducted this past December.

Artist Curt Watlers Celebrates 10 Years at Prix de West

Friday, June 8, marks the 34th annual Prix de West invitational, and will embrace more than 100 artists, including every past winner, so Curt Walters, of Sedona, Arizona, is going to have to be in top form. Preparing for his 10th year with the exhibition at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Walters has prepared what proves to be the largest piece of the show, a 60” x 90” Grand Canyon interpretation titled “Ra’s Domain.”

This substantial showpiece “embodies some of my favorite canyon themes,” Walters says. “The challenge of such a large canvas is to examine that which I love and fear. Here, great earthen temples named for the Egyptian Gods speak to us of eternity. We see the Tower of Ra keeping watch over a land of extremes: sun versus shadow; reason versus imagination; simplicity versus complexity; and, yes, even love versus fear. Grand Canyon perfectly embodies these disparate factions that compose everyday life.”

The artist’s repertoire for this year includes a second Grand Canyon, “Spring’s Caprice,” 36” x 36”, and two pieces from his trip to Banff and Yoho National Parks in Canada last year. The 10” x 12” “Bow Lake” captures Bow Glacier, headwaters for the Bow River, and “Afternoon at Lake O’Hara,” 12” x 12”, is one of three works at this year’s show to feature the quiet Canadian lake. The other two are by friend and fellow hiker John Moyers, who actually introduced Walters to the secluded location.

Curt Walters has won a remarkable four medals from Prix de West over his past nine years, more than any other artist in the museum’s history. Awarded the Nona Jean Hulsey Buyers’ Choice Award his very first year, Walters was again honored with the same award in 2002. Then, in 2004 and 2005, the artist was bestowed with an unprecedented back-to-back win of the Frederic Remington Painting Award. Walters has also received Patrons’ Choice Awards from the Masters of the American West expo at the Autry National Center and the Artists of America show in Denver. Last year he was honored with the Best Overall Presentation at the star-studded, first annual Quest for the West show at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis. He is also featured in the June/July issue of Art Talk.

When Walters is not busy with art shows, he devotes time to his other great passion, conservation of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado Plateau. Through personal donations of profits and paintings, and time devoted to fund-raising events and special seminars, Walters has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Grand Canyon Trust and the Grand Canyon Foundation, where he sits on the board of directors.

Walters has been represented by the Trailside Galleries of Scottsdale, AZ, and Jackson, WY for more than 25 years. His work can also be found at the Claggett/Rey Gallery in Vail, Co, and the Morris Gallery of Hilton Head Island, SC.

Curt Wins Quest for the West 2006

Artist Curt Walters of Sedona, Arizona is having a fabulous decade. Since 1998, the plein aire impressionist has received seven major awards from some of the country’s biggest shows, including Masters of the American West at the Autry National Center, Prix de West, and now the Quest for the West, presented by the Eiteljorg Museum of Indianapolis, Indiana.

Walters was granted the Best Overall Presentation award at Saturday night’s Banquet and Awards Ceremony. The award comes with a $4,000 prize, presented by long-time Indianapolis resident Betsy Harvey, which Walters donated back to the museum. The centerpiece of his presentation was “La Plata Thunder,” a 40” x 60” landscape of towering clouds rolling over the bluffs near Farmington, New Mexico. Unable to disappoint the fans who have long known him as the “Greatest Living Grand Canyon Artist,” Walters included two visions of the chasm, the 36” x 28” “A Diviner Air,” and the smaller “West From Lipan Point.” Rounding out the display was “Calf Creek Gorge,” part of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Though this was the first annual Quest for the West, it was certainly no small event, and Walters had to be in top form. Attracting such artists as William Acheff, Martin Grelle, and Terri Kelly Moyers, it was no surprise to find sales for the event exceeding $1,000,000. Other winners included Dennis Doheny, who took home the Purchase Award for “Guardian of the Lake,” Robert Griffing who was awarded for Best Painting, and fellow Arizona artist Doug Hyde won for Best Sculpture. Other artists from The Grand Canyon State included Bill Anton, Matt Smith, John Coleman and William Scott Jennings.

When Walters is not painting, the artist gives much of his time, money and energy to conservation of Grand Canyon and the greater Colorado Plateau, raising almost one million dollars in sales and royalties in just a few short years. In Arizona, Walters’ work can be seen at the Trailside Gallery in Scottsdale. The Trailside Gallery of Jackson, Wyoming also features his canvases, as well as the Claggett/Rey Gallery in Veil, Colorado.