STRENGTH: Don Nutt

COULEE CITY – Don Nutt has been an artist all his life.

“Every 5-year-old likes to draw and color,” he said. “I just never really stopped. Family members gave me how-to-draw books, (which was) the 1960s YouTube.”

Nutt, 62, owns Cariboo Trail Studio in Coulee City, where he sells paintings, mostly of the landscape, people and creatures of the central Washington scablands. He started selling his art 50 years ago, he said, and went full-time about 18 years ago with the encouragement of his wife of 39 years, Debbie.

“I spent most of my adult life working a real job,” Nutt said. “And once the kids were pretty much raised, I just felt like it was time. I mean, I always did artwork. But, I had a limited amount of time that I could spend doing art. So we took the leap … I told her ‘I don't know if it’ll work. She said, ‘It doesn't matter. We'll be fine.’”

About 16 years ago he moved into the building the studio now occupies. The name comes from the 800-mile-long trail that took hopeful prospectors from eastern Washington and points south to the Cariboo Gold Rush in central British Columbia in the 1860s. One branch of the trail ran through what’s now Coulee City.

“I think the mines up there are still working,” he said. “It's one of the biggest gold strikes ever … I've always been kind of a student of local history so that that's where I came up with the idea for Cariboo Trail. And yes, I get Americans come in here and kind of quietly say, ‘I think you misspelled it.’ Canadians come in and go ‘Yeah, that's how it’s supposed to look.’”

The local area is an important factor in Nutt’s paintings. Rocky landscapes of the Grand Coulee or the plains of Douglas County are frequent subjects. So are cowboys on horses and Native Americans in traditional garb. The studio itself looks like something out of the Old West. Besides the paintings, the space is festooned with antique firearms, a couple of wood stoves and a (regrettably non-functional) pump organ salvaged from a church, among other frontier this-and-that.

“I've done like 50 or 60, at least, paintings of Lenore Lake,” Nutt said. “And a lot of people ask me, ‘How can you do so many of the same area?’ It never looks the same. I mean, you can drive down there every day for a month and the colors won't be exactly the same day after day.”

A couple of years ago, Nutt suggested on social media that Coulee City would be a good place to gather for an art walk. A number of artists responded enthusiastically, and the first April Fool’s Art Walk was born. 

Nutt went door to door to Coulee City businesses to see which ones would be willing to host artists. Many were eager to participate, particularly right after the COVID-19 pandemic was winding down. Fourteen artists, authors and local historians set up displays in back corners of the shops and interacted with a crowd of about 400 people.

Lyn D. Nielsen, author of the “Place of Sage” trilogy, shared space with Nutt at Cariboo Trail.

“Immersed in his beautiful art around me, I was grateful to know Don,” Nielsen wrote in an email to the Columbia Basin Herald. “He never gave up. And as I watched faces light up as people entered his studio, I had to smile. From humble beginnings, great things come.”

Ralph Reed, whose wife Barbara Conner-Reed was showing paintings at the Art Walk.

“Don put on a helluva show,” Reed said.

The Art Walk was repeated in 2023, but this year Nutt gave it a pass due to time constraints. He’s not sure if it will return next year, he said, due to logistical difficulties. One of the buildings that hosted artists in the past is now vacant, he said. Another isn’t allowed to have anyone inside selling things. Setting up the walk outdoors is a possibility, he said, but that requires buying liability insurance.

“The drawback to that is I have to charge money for the vendors and the artists, and that’s something I didn't want to do,” he said. “I just want them to come up and show their work.”

Nutt could have set up his studio in a bigger city and maybe made more money than in this town of about 600 souls,but having lived his whole life in Coulee City, he knows where he wants to be.

“I've had people come in and ask me why I'm not in Jackson or Santa Fe or someplace like that,” he said. “I've got a good thing going, I'm happy right here.”

“There's no doubt that Don has been approached by prestigious galleries with offers of fame and fortune, but he does success his way,” Nielsen wrote. “By staying true to his family, his art and his community, he enriches the lives of young and old around him. Don, and his art, contribute to what makes the Columbia Basin a special place to live.”

Joel Martin may be reached via email at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.

    At Cariboo Trail Studio, Don Nutt’s original artwork shares space with an eclectic collection of Old West memorabilia.