Daniel Smith: Taking Wildlife Realism To The Next Level
By Todd Wilkinson

Smith's status as a rising star prompted the venerable publishing house, Mill Pond Press, to bring him within their fold of master artists. His work has been among the most avidly collected. "I was very pleased to be part of the Mill Pond family of artists, I had a lot more creative freedom painting for the print market compared to designing duck stamps," he says. "I am a big fan of Robert Bateman and enjoyed getting to known him on a personal level. His work has a strong influence and I admire all that he does as an environmentalist.

Indeed, wildlife art speaks to the important symbolism that animals have in the modern world. People living at the end of the 20th century and into the new millennium, embrace wildlife imagery as a touchstone linking them not only the past, but reminding them of the sensual aesthetic that is vitally important in their daily lives.

Despite incredible demand, Smith refused to be pigeonholed as a Duck Stamp artist and broke away from his roots in Minnesota and headed West. To put it simply, Smith's easel paintings today are informed by decades of going to the source for his material. And indeed, though he is known for his own distinctive approach to Realism, Smith shares company with a distinguished group of "wildlife artists" who started their professional careers in the trenches, refining their ability to draw and compose, as commercial illustrators on tight deadlines. Those brethren include the likes of Bob Kuhn, Bob Abbett, Ken Carlson, and even Winslow Homer and students of the great Howard Pyle, such as N.C. Wyeth during the Golden Age of Illustration.

"Even from his early years, you could tell that Dan Smith was going to be true to his subjects, painting the images with true creativity and conviction," notes Allan Duerr, co-publisher of Art of the West Magazine which not long ago identified Smith as one of the young giants of wildlife art in America. "The brilliance of the specific subject jumps out at you, but at the same time blends well with his chosen background. He is a master painter and a real gentleman ... can't ask for more than that."

For years, Smith and his late dear friend, Paco Young, exchanged hard, tough-love critiques of one another's work and Smith helped Young in hosting painting workshops in the Bridger Mountains that were taught by some of the world's leading wildlife artists and attended by students from a dozen different countries. "Paco and I moved to Bozeman within three months of each other. We had a lot in common and got together often for critiques," Smith says.

Young pushed Smith to move far beyond mere illustration. His representational, recognizable portrayals of mammals and avifauna are a confluence of abstraction and flowing color. Rather than striving for topographic texture, Smith renders his brushstrokes almost invisible.