Wildlife Calendar Artists

Tom Antonishak

My interest in fine art began when I noticed an advertisement for a national art contest. This contest was for the National Park Academy Arts for the Parks Competition. A rendering of an eagle soaring across Mount Rushmore made the exhibit. More than 3,000 entries from the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico entered the competition to make the top 100 for the exhibit. My painting was the first painting sold and was displayed at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. The painting ended up at the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota.

In 1993 an oil painting entitled “Autumn Cardinals and Creepers” featuring the scarlet songbird in Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area won the Grand Prize and the Gold Medallion Award of Merit for the Arts for the Parks Competition. This painting is now part of the permanent collection of the National Park Foundation.

Accomplishments include the 1992 winning image for the New York Duck Stamp. The 1993 Ducks Unlimited Guess Artist Print “Long Day Pause.” A painting “Goose Island” was selected for Birds in Art, which is a prestigious international wildlife art exhibit at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin. This work was singled out from entries submitted by artist worldwide. Twice I’ve been selected to participate in the Wildlife Art Sale at Christie’s of London, England. These events maintain the highest standards of today’s best wildlife art from around the world.

I have illustrated various books and magazines such as The Nature Conservancy, Smithsonian Institute and Field and Stream. Growing up in the mountains of Pennsylvania, becoming an Eagle Scout I’ve learned to appreciate nature. I served in the United States Navy during the Vietnam War and later worked in the Pentagon with the Defense Intelligence Agency. After the Navy, I returned home and married my wife, Carol.

The two of us moved to Pittsburgh where I attended the Art Institute of Pittsburgh majoring in graphic design. There I won the Merrill-Milai Scholarship and worked as a courtroom sketch artist and free-lanced for various local television stations as a news artist. After graduating, I worked as an illustrator. In 1981 I opened my own commercial art studio. My interest in art stemmed from an interest in history, particularly with the American West. I began to travel to militia musters, pioneer villages and Indian pow wows to find authentic models for my paintings. I have sculpted numerous fountains of life size bronze figures and animals. “…my painting background has helped in the design of my sculptures… and I find as I paint, I’m always thinking of what the subject looks like three dimensionally as well.” My painting and sculpturing styles are marked with an acute sense of detail and intensity.

Featured Artwork:

Bruce Miller

Born in Minneapolis in 1952, Bruce Miller showed signs of artistic talent at an early age, Given a set of acrylic paints for seventh grade art class, he painted exclusively with acrylics until 1999, when he began painting with oils.

After high school, Bruce majored in art at St. Cloud State University and expanded his horizons as a world traveler. He returned to Minnesota to seriously pursue his art career in 1975. Miller experimented with a variety of genres including portraits, landscape, abstract and surrealism. Being an avid outdoorsman and Eagle Scout, in 1981 he began painting wildlife.

In 1988 he won his first national contest, Artist of the Year for the Michigan Wildlife Art Festival and since has won over 50 awards and been featured at several major art shows in the country. He has won 23 conservation stamps including the 1993 Federal Duck Stamp and recently the 2015 Texas Duck Stamp. And was named the 1999 Ducks Unlimited International Artist of the Year, The National Wild Turkey Federation Artist of the Year 2008 and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation Artist of the Year in 2002 and 2011. Miller’s work has generated over $10,000,000 for conservation. Conservation of wetlands being paramount in his life.

His work also has won critical acclaim, being selected for the Leigh Yawkey Woodson “Birds in Art” exhibition. His paintings have won two ‘Award of Excellence’ honors, at the Natureworks art show in Tulsa. He has also won two Artist Choice awards at the Artist Studio and Auction at the Calgary Stampede, most recently in 2014. He also does the Dallas Safari Club show in January and SCI in Las Vegas in February. In 1999, Miller was moved by some art he saw at The Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis. He decided to switch to oil and attempt to paint in a more impressionistic manner. His work continues to evolve after years of intense study.

The city of his residence during the Federal Duck Stamp win, in 1993, showed their appreciation for one of their own by dedicating a wildlife preserve, in Bruce’s name.

He was especially moved in 2012 by a once in a lifetime exibit of Nicolai Fechin at the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis. You will see the influence in his chicken portraits and cougar painting. He continues to evolve as all art does. And he continues to experiment with expressionistic techniques.

His passions outside of art are bird and duck hunting, and fly fishing. He will fly fish for anything he can, but his favorite sport is doing a canoe float and fly fishing for smallmouth bass with popper flies.

Featured Artwork:

Jack Paluh

Artist Jack Paluh (pronounced pa-LEW), resides in Northwestern Pennsylvania in the small borough of Waterford with his wife Marian and their three children living nearby. Jack was a “constant doodler” from the time he was old enough to hold a pencil. His teachers encouraged him to continue developing his art skills following high school, but being young, Paluh had other ideas and found work as a truck driver.

His life changed drastically, however, in the autumn of 1982, when he was injured in a hunting accident. “While I was bow hunting, my tree stand collapsed beneath me and I fell 20 feet to the ground, cracking a vertebra in my back,” Jack remembers, “but God was faithful, and provided me with an opportunity to find the silver lining in a very dark cloud.” Paluh is referring to his recuperation period when he painted a white-tailed deer painting titled Monday Morning. “That was nearly 30 years ago,” says Paluh, “and so began my career as a full-time nature artist.”

“All of nature continues to fascinate and inspire me. The older I become, the more I realize how intricate our natural world is created. I truly enjoy the time spent outdoors as it is my time to pray, dream and compose.”

Jack has received many honors in his career as a nature artist, but none more significant to him than meeting and talking with the people who have enjoyed and purchased his artwork. Jack is never too busy to answer questions, or swap a few hunting stories. Jack’s natural sense of humor is ever present as well as his strong faith in God.

Jack is a dedicated bowhunter and naturalist. Many of his paintings have been created while sitting in his tree stand. Hunting is the lifeline of Paluh’s artwork. He is an avid turkey hunter and chasing white-tailed deer with a bow and arrow comes in a close second and in recent years, he also has taken up duck and goose hunting. “Even on a hunting day that has been less than successful, I still return home with ideas. I file those ideas away and use them in future paintings,” states Jack.

For the last several years, Jack’s favorite workspace has been outdoors, using a technique called Plein Air Painting. Painting outdoors or “out in the open,” images are painted in a short period of time to capture lighting and color temperatures. This capture of natural light and color enables him to carry these small studies back to the studio and bring large paintings to life. On occasion, Paluh will put some of these Plein Air Paintings up for sale.

“I often sketch or paint outdoors first to capture color and setting,” states Paluh, “then move indoors to refine the painting. I want the person to feel as if they have visited the place I’m painting. Oil paints provide me with rich colors and a longer drying period to make changes on the canvas.”

In this artist’s heart, there is always another painting around the bend. Often people will ask Paluh which painting is his favorite. With a smile, he always states, “My next one!”