As a young boy, some of Daniel W. Pinkham’s most impressionable moments occurred back on his grandparents’ farm in North Carolina. His memories of the smell of the soil after a rain, the squeak and slap of the screen door as he exited the farmhouse and the lighting of the fires under the tobacco barns to dry and cure the leaves have never faded. These experiences helped shape and “make human of him,” as his Russian art teacher, Sergei Bongart, would say. Since those impressionable days, not a day has gone by that he hasn’t tried to record his journey and expose the interaction he felt with this miracle called life. For over 50 years, the West has been his teacher. During this most recent chapter of his artistic life, the journey continues in Idaho.
Pinkham received the Thomas Moran Award at the Masters of the American West Exhibition in 2020. In 2018, he received the Artist’s Choice award at the Autry’s Masters of the American West exhibition. In 2014 he received the Red Smith Gold Medal for Best of Show, Gold Medal, at the National Museum of Wildlife Arts Western Vision Show and Sale. In 2009 he received the Gold medal for Best of Show at the California Art Club’s 98th Annual Gold Medal Juried Exhibition and he won the Gold Medal, Best of Show Award at the 2008 Maynard Dixon Country Invitational.
Pinkham and his artist wife, Vicki, have dedicated their lives to art and community. They have founded the Pinkham Foundation for the Arts, a non-profit organization that offers educational programs, artist-in-residence opportunities, workshops and lectures at their California and Idaho homes.
Pinkham and his work have been featured in American Artist, Art of the West, Fine Art Connoisseur (first Landscape artist on the cover), Southwest Art, Western Art & Architecture and Western Art Collector. His works are in the permanent collections of the Autry Museum of the American West, the Carnegie Art Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He is both a signature member and board member of the California Art Club, and a signature member of Oil Painters of America.
