Call From the Willows by Richard Loffler - # 158

At 68, Richard “Rich” Loffler is an avid outdoorsman. He juggles his time between home, his fieldwork, his studio work and the casting foundries, where he oversees the patinas and completed works.

Loffler was accepted into membership with the Society of Animal Artists and the National Sculpture Society, both in New York, in 1989. He has continued to show with the Prix de West since 1993, and was the recipient of the Robert Lougheed Memorial Award in 2002 and the James Earle Fraser Sculpture Award in 2012.

Loffler created a 65-foot-long heroic sculpture, called The Buffalo Trail, which resides in front of the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming. He also created a 1 1/4-life-sized monumental sculpture, titled Outlaw after a bounty rodeo bull owned by the Calgary Stampede, for downtown Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Loffler’s work is in numerous corporate and permanent museum collections across North America, and he has taught sculpture classes in many venues including the Scottsdale Artists’ School in Scottsdale, Arizona, for over 10 years.

“Art is an expression of our innermost thoughts, perceptions and aspirations,” Loffler said. “It is an extension of society, the happening of our era and the progress of our time. When balanced with truth, knowledge and sensitivity, art holds the virtuous vision of the past, an account of the present and a dream for tomorrow.”