Skip to main content
Skip to main content
Collections Menu
Ken Carlson
Ken Carlson
Artist retains copyright. © Ken Carlson In essence: Allows the NMWA to use images of your work(s) for Museum specific things, including publications, on the website, in magazine and newspaper articles, invitations, flyers, etc. Allows the NMWA to use images of your work(s) to create items that can be sold in the Museum Shop and through the website. This could include, but is not limited to, postcards and posters. Allows any institutions which may borrow work(s) of yours on loan from the NMWA to utilize images of your work(s) for exhibition related advertisements and catalogs Allows the NMWA to use images of any future work(s) that it collects, in which the copyright is held by you, for Museum specific things (see #1).

Ken Carlson

United States, born 1937
Place of BirthUnited States of America
BiographyWhen Ken Carlson was a young boy, he was confined to bed for a year following an attack of rheumatic fever. During that year he taught himself to draw. While many young boys dreamed of becoming baseball heroes like Joe DiMaggio when they grew up, Ken Carlson had aspirations of becoming an artist like Bob Kuhn. Carlson won a scholarship in an art contest to the Art Instruction School in Minneapolis, where his teachers included the renowned animal illustrator, Walter Wilwerding (1891-1966). After high school, he attended the Minneapolis School of Art for a year, then joined a commercial art firm. Although commercial art was not his main professional focus, Carlson accepted a commission to illustrate for the publication Birds of Western North America (McMillan, 1972). After two years on the project, he returned to painting animals in oils on large-scale canvases. When painting in his studio, he uses photographs to supplement his field observations of animals. Ken Carlson is widely recognized as one of the foremost interpreters of North American wildlife. His work has been exhibited in public museums such as the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wasau, Wisconsin, and the Genesee County Museum in Mumford, New York, as well as the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming.
Person TypeIndividual
Terms