Read this Wildlife Art Journal article

A long time ago, Monte Dolack crossed a divide in his critical thinking as an artist.  It involved a realization that has come to define his work and given him something of a cult following in his home region, the northern Rockies of the American West.

Dolack was raised in Great Falls, Montana, a city given its name by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.  The explorers, dispatched by American President Thomas Jefferson, encountered a series of waterfalls along the Upper Missouri River while making an overland quest to reach the Pacific Ocean and map newly acquired territory purchased from France.

Great Falls is perhaps best known in art circles for being the hometown of  Charles M. Russell—in fact, the rivertown has a fine art museum named after Russell.  As Dolack points out, Great Falls is also a burg surrounded by bizarre contrasts. In the very same inviting landscape possessing sublime natural beauty sit army missile silos with nuclear warheads inside them, capable of killing tens of millions of people.

Virtually every major environmental problem, Dolack says, has a similar inherent dichotomy—on the one hand it involves things that people love, elements that can move them to tears;  on the other, there are looming threats that could take the former away.  Humans want to be inspired, he says, yet we often shirk from having to confront unpleasant realities.  Dolack attempts to bridge the gap and it is what has made him one of the most important "conservation artists"...