Ezra Tucker

After 30-plus years of illustration and commercial art success, Ezra Tucker embarked on a fine art career, determined to create his own style of artistic beauty in both the portrayal of wildlife and historical personalities and events surrounding the settling of the American Western frontier. This 18-year journey has proved fulfilling and rewarding to his artistic vision and ambitions.

Tucker is widely admired for his paintings that portray wildlife, notably mammals, but also birds as well as historic scenes. His wildlife and historical art is reminiscent of the descriptive and narrative art produced by naturalists like Charles R. Knight and John James Audubon and reflective of many of the illustrators of the Golden Age of Illustration. While done with a nod of the head to the rich style of famous American illustrator Howard Pyle, Tucker’s art is both lyrical and specific at the same time.

The Black experience in the history of the American West has been untold by the historical record and is visibly absent from many of our nation’s museum collections. Tucker’s historical paintings pictorially tell the stories of people of African descent: cowboys, bronco busters, Pony Express riders, Buffalo Soldiers, Black Seminole scouts, and other Americans who shaped the North American frontier.

The art of classical wildlife artists like Bob Kuhn, Carl Rungius, Edwin Landseer, Arthur Wardle, and Antoine-Louis Barye has also influenced Tucker’s style. His depictions, like theirs, pull viewers into the artwork from curiosity and their desire to be informed. He achieves this with dynamic compositions, unexpected color, lighting, and scale. Tucker’s art gives dignity and presence to each subject that he depicts. His compositions reflect the classical style of design and storytelling. His depictions are alive, animated, and appear ready to step out of two dimensions into a three-dimensional world. It is obvious from his exceptional drawing skills that his art derives from his acute knowledge gained by study of his subjects and not from a photographer’s point of view. There is a romantic appeal that he achieves with his color palette and lighting of his subjects that is familiar yet innovative.

Tucker’s background as a commercial illustrator and designer gives him the experience and almost a scientific knowledge of how to portray an iconic or bold narrative scene or portrait. His use of earth tones and warm light gives his subjects an Old Masters appeal that brings warmth to any traditional or contemporary setting when his art is displayed. His art is distinctive and reflective of natural history museum collections. Tucker states, “My desire is for my art to be educational, inspirational, entertaining, and to evoke an emotional response from the viewer.”

Tucker’s original art is included in the permanent collections of Adolph Coors, Inc., Anheuser-Busch, Inc., the Booth Western Art Museum, the Briscoe Western Art Museum, the James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art, the Pentagon/United States Air Force Art Program, and many private and Fortune 500 corporate collections.

Ezra Tucker is represented by the Broadmoor Galleries, Colorado Springs, Colorado; Courtney Collins Fine Art, Big Sky, Montana; Gallery 330, Fredericksburg, Texas; Mary Martin Galleries I and II, Charleston, North Carolina; the Red Piano Art Gallery, Bluffton, South Carolina; Santa Fe Trails Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Trailside Galleries–online; Western Stars Gallery & Studio, St. Lyons, Colorado; and Wild Horse Gallery, Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

View the Autry’s interview with Ezra Tucker here. Recorded live January/2023.