I’ve been lucky to be associated with Radius Gallery for about 7 years now. They invited me this year to send a handful of paintings to be in a “show within a show” called WILD – WONDEROUS – WORLD that’s part of their annual Holiday Show and Sale that runs November 4 – December 31, 2023. My pieces will be in WILD which focuses on animal art. Next year at Radius (Fall 2024), I’ll be in an animal art group show – title TBD – featuring Diana Stetson, Jessie Baggett, John Isaiah Pepion, Esther Shimazu, Rebecca Haines and myself. If you’re in the Missoula, Montana area for either of these shows, please stop by.
Below are the pieces included in this year’s WILD show.
First up is the Great Horned Owl. Part of a group of pieces that I’ve nicknamed the “inset” series because of blurred background (it’s actually blurred map) the bird is painted over. I spent a couple of days just on the eye and after that the rest fell into place.
Another one of the “insets.” The Connoisseur. I used Photohop to enhance the map, build the borders and also create the title shield. I printed the map using a large format printer and mounted the paper to a birch panel, but using acyrlic to paint Waxwing. When complete and seasoned, a coat of gloss varnish seals it.
Couldn’t resist riffing on the Sex Pistols for this one’s title ‘Nevermind the Baltimore’s – Here’s a Bullock’s Oriole!
I went back (and the Heron piece, too) to using stained road maps in a quilt-like pattern for this Hooded Merganser.
Great Blue Heron – Reponse, matches the largest piece I’ve done. 16 X 16 and larger are outside my comfort zone, but I think that zone has just expanded!
In pieces that have a border, I try to put not only information about the map that came from the original map, but also facts about the bird. No reason a piece can be not only beautiful, but informative.
One of those lucky map finds from the mid-20th century. As you can see, I added info about the bird and note about who recontextualized the map. This is a Costa’s Hummingbird, but I used one of my own photos of a Ruby-throated Hummingbird in flight for the post.
