After thirty 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 historically, accurate personalities and events.
Ezra is widely admired for his paintings that portray wildlife, notably mammals but also birds as well as historic scenes. Ezra Tucker’s wildlife and historical art is reminiscent of the descriptive and narrative art produced by naturalist 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, Ezra’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 visibly absent from many of our nation’s museum collections. Ezra Tucker’s historical paintings pictorially tell the stories of people of African descent: cowboys, bronco busters, Pony Express riders, Buffalo Soldiers, Indian scouts and other Americans who shaped the North American frontier.
The art of Classical Wildlife artist like Bob Khun, Carl Rungius, Edwin Landseer, Arthur Wardle and Antoine Bayre has also influenced Ezra’s style. His depictions, like theirs, pulls the viewer into the artwork from curiosity and their desire to be informed. He achieves this with dynamic compositions, unexpected color, lighting, and scale. Ezra’s art gives dignity and presence to each subject that he depicts. His compositions reflect the classical style of design and story telling. 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 from study of his subjects and not from a photographers 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. Ezra’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. Ezra states, “My desire is for my art to be educational, inspirational, entertaining and to evoke an emotional response from the viewer.”
Ezra’s original art is included in the permanent collections of The Booth Western Art Museum, The James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art, The Briscoe Western Museum of Art, Anhesher – Busch, Inc., Adolf Coors, Inc., The Pentagon / United States Air Force Art Program and many private and Fortune 500 corporate collections.
View video of “Inside the Artist’s Studio” talk from 11/2/2022