Daniel Parker

Parker's great grandfather, originally from Norridgewock, Maine, had moved to the Flathead Valley in 1905 from Parker, Minnesota, to homestead on a farm on the Flathead River, near Demersville, about five miles south of Kalispell and two miles north of Flathead Lake.

He is the son of Donald Edward "Don" Parker (1938–2015) and Joan Arlue Sievers (1939-2019).

Daniel Ray Parker (born November 18, 1959) is an American wildlife sculptor and painter.

Parker has won multiple awards for wildlife sculpture at major art shows in the United States.

He is a resident of Kalispell, Montana.

Parker was born on November 18, 1959, in Portland, Oregon.

The Parkers had moved to Portland in early 1959 from Kalispell, Montana, to find work but after less than a year in Oregon they moved back to Kalispell, their home town.

He did, however, succeed as a night club performer and headlined some state fairs in the late 1960s, one such performance being in Missoula, Montana, at the Western Montana Fair, that was rained out.

Daniel's mother, Joan, held out hope that Don would return to Kalispell to help raise his children; he never did.

Also, he never provided any child support or alimony, so in October 1962 she was granted a divorce on the ground of "extreme cruelty".

Daniel and his siblings grew up destitute, having been raised by a single mother and family on welfare who had been abandoned.

Parker's father, who by 1963 was an aspiring country western singer and guitarist, met a woman nearly twice his age in a Kalispell night club and decided to eschew his marital and parental responsibilities by leaving town with her—abandoning his family—and headed for California where he thought he would become a famous musician but instead took construction work building a tunnel.

After moving to Hendersonville, Tennessee, in 1966, Don did have some mild success when he toured with Tommy Cash and later recorded a single as the duet "Don & Carla" with 50 States Records, but long-term success would evade him due largely to an affinity for alcohol.

The 45 record he recorded was not successful, selling only a few hundred copies.

Parker's mother would remarry three times, first in a short-lived 1967 marriage to Harold Schiele—a Ronan, Montana, carpenter—and followed that unsuccessful union by tying the knot in 1969 with Leo Arbuckle, a logger from Coram, Montana.

Her final marriage came in 1975 to Herbert "Sonny" Strong, a used car salesman—son of the noted golf course architect Herbert B. Strong—who had moved to Kalispell in 1971 from Fort Pierce, Florida.

Strong, who was a hunting enthusiast, taught Daniel the fundamentals of deer and elk hunting, an activity he would continue to enjoy.

In 1975, during school summer vacation, he took a job as an apprentice carpenter building garages for Bill Williams, a Columbia Falls building contractor.

While attending an art class in 1977 at Flathead High School taught by Frank DiVita, who in his spare time from teaching was an accomplished bird sculptor, Parker received encouragement from DiVita who suggested that he try his hand at sculpture.

The suggestion was taken up by Parker who produced his first sculpture, a fired clay bighorn sheep.

It was a miniature statue cast in pewter, only about three inches long and an inch high, but the nascent start would later blossom into a successful career as a wildlife sculptor.

The carpentry work in the summers was steady until Parker graduated from Flathead High School in 1978.

He then took up a position as a carpenter working on the power generating station near the coal strip mining operations in Colstrip, Montana.

He stayed on the job at the power station until 1980 when he returned to Kalispell.

In the winter of 1981 Parker met his future wife, Jeanne Drollinger, at the Blue Moon nightclub in Columbia Falls.

They were married on June 2, 1982, and three children were born to the couple, son Joshua and daughters Shannon and Lindsey.

As a couple, the Parkers are engaged as a hobby in riding, and to a lesser extent raising, horses and mules.

Daniel, when he finds time in the fall, enjoys elk hunting with bow and arrow and is an ardent supporter of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.

Parker and his wife, the daughter of a preacher, attend church on a regular basis.

Parker maintains a busy show schedule, attending the Safari Club International show in Nevada annually.

His most important art show each year is the annual C. M. Russell Art Show, now called "The Russell", in Great Falls, Montana, held in March.

In addition to scheduled shows, he often takes on commissioned projects as well.

By virtue of his natural abilities and dogged, unrelenting self-determination, Parker taught himself how to sculpt and paint, although he didn't take up painting seriously until he was in his late 40s when he got a few informal personal painting lessons from his friend Don Oelze, a New Zealand-born master painter of Native American genre subjects.

Parker was inspired in his pursuit of a career in art by witnessing the successful careers of fellow Kalispell artists Ace Powell, Frank Hagel, Mark Ogle, and others.

Parker was an average student in school, generally receiving "C" grades, but he always excelled in art, his favorite subject.

In 1983, Parker began to sculpt his first series of sculptures for public sale.

The edition, which he called the "North American Collection", included sculptures of twelve different North American big game animals.

At first he hired the Kalispell Art Casting Foundry to cast his work in bronze.

Daniel's older brother, Mike, would say in 2015 after the death of their father, "unfortunately, he was only a sperm donor and nothing more".

In the first 20 years of their lives, the Parker children would see their biological father twice, on each occasion for just a few hours.