Featured Artist and Jurist:

Exra Tucker, 

Renowned Western Wildlife Artist

Ezra Tucker started his career and family here in the Santa Ynez Valley. He participated in SLOPOKE 2018 and 2019. Awards Jurist Gayle Garner Roski presented him the Artists Choice Award for his painting “Scarlet” depicting a beautiful vixen. He returns this year as our Featured Artist and Awards Jurist. Painting wildlife in a realistic, stylized manner, Ezra  preserves the dignity of and our respect for all creatures inhabiting our planet.  He received a BFA degree from the Memphis Academy of Arts but learned by studying the works of Carl Rungius, W.R. Leigh, N.C. Wyeth, Antoine Barye and Arthur Wardle, among others. Ezra captures the texture, motion, and personality of his subjects with an impressionistic brush stroke to evoke an idea of the animal, not just an illustration. An award winning artist, his paintings are in the permanent collections of the Booth Western Art Museum, The Texas Rangers Historical Museum, the Briscoe Western Art Museum, the USAF Art Program in the Pentagon, and he has exhibited in the Autry Museum’s Masters of the American West Exhibition in 2023 and 2024.