Malamute

“One of the greatest attributes of art,” says Tucker Smith, “is that one does not need to be a painter or sculptor to participate. One only needs to observe.”

“Malamute” is a painting of one of the artist’s dogs resting contentedly in the snow by an outbuilding on his ranch in Montana. “I had confiscated the traps from a fellow who was illegally trapping on our land,” he says. “In the early days, dog teams were used to run trap lines so when I saw Tobuk curled up under the traps, I thought it was a fitting scene for a painting.” Tucker Smith won the 2010 Bob Kuhn Wildlife Award.