another work depicts a man dancing with a gigantic rainbow trout. Whimsy is an important characteristic of Dolack's work. Filmmaker Annick Smith has described Dolack's work as "a fairytale version of [an] actual place. His whimsical eye informs both our urban and rural stories, adding color, form and sharp lines to the obscure and chaotic vistas of real life. He's a myth-maker, which is why he is Montana's most popular contemporary artist." Juxtaposition and paradox (a blue heron in an urban setting, fish leaping through a field of wheat) are two of the most common ways in which Dolack creates whimsy in his work. Smith, however, notes that Dolack's work, while representational, incorporates elements of psychedelic art, modern art, and postmodern art. His work also tends to be narrative, in that each image tells a story. Dolack has said his commissioned work tends to be more obvious in this regard, while his personal artwork is meant to be subtle—enjoyable if a viewer understands its philosophical underpinnings, and enjoyable if the viewer does not. As Dolack said of a series of works in 2002: "I didn't want these pictures to be didactic and finger-wagging kinds of pictures. You can get into that making posters, because you're really trying to tell people things, explain things or get a message across. With these pictures, I really wanted there to be a more poetic presence to them, where everyone could find their own message in the picture and have a different interpretation. So I didn't want to get too into explaining each picture." Environmentalism is another key theme in Dolack's work. Dorothy Hinshaw Patent, former director of the Montana Committee for the Humanities, says that Dolack's environmental message in the mid 1980s was subtle. But by the time of his 2000 work "Montana History Lesson," she notes, Dolack had opted for "overt" statements. The whimsical nature of Dolack's work masks exceptional technique as an artist, however. Maggie Mudd, executive director of the University of Montana's Montana Museum of Art and Culture, points out that Dolack uses "painstaking painting techniques" which produce highly polished visual surfaces. Dolack's work also exhibits "wildly inventive color". Notable works Among his more notable works are: "Yahoo" (1978) – One of his earliest works, the poster features a cowgirl on a horse, with an anti-nuclear symbol below. "Blackfoot River" (1986) – A poster featuring a westslope cutthroat trout in the