Read this Wildlife Art Journal article

Billings, Montana sculptor Tim Shinabarger and Greg Beecham, a wildlife artist from Dubois, Wyoming, were among the top prize recipients at the 2010 Prix de West Invitational in Oklahama City.

The coveted Prix de West Purchase Award, considered the most coveted honor, went to martime painter Christopher Blossom, who hails from Connecticut, for his protrayal of an 1883 ship sailing into San Francisco Bay.

Prix de West, the premiere Western art event of the summer, is now in its 37th year and held annually at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

Artists who featured wildlife and natural landscapes in their work were well received. Shinabarger was named recipient of the Charles Earle Fraser Sculpture Award for his interpretated of two jousting bighorn sheep rams. 

Beecham, meantime, took home the Maj. General and Mrs Don Pittman Wildlife Art Award for his oil painting of wolves on the run.

Another artist who again netted critical attention was George Carlson, best known for his figurative sculpture, sometimes portraying animals, but who in 2010 demonstrated his double talent as a painter. 

Carlson was named recipient of both the Frederic Remington Painting Award and the Robert Lougheed Memorial Award for his landscape paintings of the Palouse country in nothern Idaho and eastern Washington state. Last but not least, Howard Post's oil painting, Working The Ramada, was cited as the best portrayal of a cowboy.

To see the winning pieces, peruse the accompanying slide show...