Walter Piehl: Enduring Vision Award Finalist

North Dakota painter Walter Piehl, Jr. has been named a finalist for the 2008 inaugural Bush Foundation Enduring Vision Award, a prize worth $100,000 distributed over a three to five year period.

Ten finalists have been selected from a pool of ninety-three nominated artists. The Enduring Vision Award was designed to “propel the artistic investigation of mature artists and to encourage their continued influence on present and future generations of artists and audiences.”

Piehl, a Marion, North Dakota native is an innovative and accomplished Western Americana painter whose works have been exhibited widely in regional and national galleries and museums, including the North Dakota Museum of Art, the Rourke Art Museum, the Suzanne Brown Gallery, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian and Western Art, plus numerous others, culminating in a 2003 Plains Art Museum major exhibition, “The Walter Piehl, Jr. Retrospective,” curated by Rusty Freeman of the Plains Art Museum, Fargo, North Dakota.

Finalists are required to submit digital images, along with original work, plus a philosophical statement to the Bush Foundation’s finalist review panel. Three winners will be announced in May.