Curt Walters won the Jackie L. Coles Buyer’s Choice Award for his Grand Canyon painting Compilation of the Gods at Prix de West in 2017. With this win, Walters has won the Buyers’ Choice six times, the most by one artist in the history of the show. Previously at Prix de West, Walters was honored with the Buyers’ Choice Award in 1998, 2002, 2007, 2011, and 2013, and the Frederic Remington Award back to back in 2004 and 2005, then again in 2013. He was honored with a double win in 2007 receiving the Buyers’ Choice Award for Ra’s Domain and the Prix de West Purchase Award for Spring’s Caprice, the only time in the history of the show that an artist has won two awards for different paintings in the same show.

Three major events dominated 2016 for Walters. First, Walters’ drawings of Spanish conquistadors and paintings of the Grand Canyon were featured in a comprehensive “Grand Canyon Exhibition” at the Eiteljorg Museum during the summer. Walters also gave a lecture there focusing on his lifelong work and relationship with the Grand Canyon as subject. Second, Walters was one of the featured speakers and instructors at the Tucson plein aire convention. Lastly, a spring opening at the Museum of Northern Arizona of his third one-man retrospective featured 35 paintings and drawings that spanned the last 35 years of his career.