Critters
“April Chippies”
Perky eastern chipmunks share space with blood root - my favorite wild flower , a spider, a beetle and a slightly hidden blue jay feather. The feather is a nod to artist, Sally Middleton, who long ago showed me I didn’t have to fill all the space. She greatly influenced my work and this piece is in her style. We have chippies in the rocks around our pond and they are a delight to watch! Dashing from place to place with their cheeks full and their tails held straight up! So very cute!
Archival giclee signed and numbered limited edition (500) from a gouache and pencil original
“Reclaiming the Old Homestead”
Cotton-tail Rabbits, wild flowers and an assortment of things humans discarded
Once in a while I come up with a wild hare. I lived in Eureka Springs, Arkansas when I painted this one and the old bits of people junk came from places where houses used to be in that old victorian town. I had friends who raised a wild bunny on their screened in porch and was used to people and I took photos of their rabbit for reference. Look closely, there are so many details in this!
Archival giclee signed and numbered limited edition (500) from a gouache original
“Too Early for Strawberries”
White-footed Mouse in a weedy tangle
He has treasures - a marble and part of a tea cup! One man’s trash is a mouse treasure! This one started with just the pine cone and me messing around for fun. The cone turned out so nicely, I went to the woods to gather weedy things and found a stray marble and a bit of tea cup. The piece needed a small bit of animal life, hence a mouse. They all start in different ways and ya just have to go with the flow!
Archival giclee signed and numbered limited edition (500) from a gouache and pencil original
All of the prints are archival giclees produced by us and in our studio. The term "giclee" refers to the printing process. This process provides wonderful color accuracy and detail without the dot pattern of an offset lithograph. David scans the original and uses photoshop to correct colors. Color correcting is a skill and can go quickly or take days of trying. We have a large format Epson printer and use Epson's archival inks on acid-free Somerset Velvet paper. The inks are light-fast and under normal household conditions will not fade for 100 years.
We have a small pond that’s feed by a rocky waterfall and chipmunks make their home there. I love watching them! They are so fast with tails held up like bumper cars! I watching them waddle off with cheeks full of sunflower seeds and wonder in what underground passage their treasure trove is located. Do mice raid the stash? Are there underground wars I’m totally unaware of ….
Other critters visit our pond and waterfall as we watch from the deck and windows. Four very young raccoons came exploring one morning. Marching in one perfect line, perhaps on their first adventure without Mom, the masked marauders probed every bit of shoreline and then trotted away happy. They visited several times but when a couple of bird feeders were sacrificed we relocated them to a national park.
Turtles, deer, possum and neighborhood dogs are pond visitors but the frogs are residents! They own the pond and spring with frogs is deafening! The clamor increases day by day till we can’t use the deck! We have to close the windows and give them a week to settle down. You just have to experience it to understand.
For several years we had a happy ground hog we named Ralph that would wobble in from the woods, mount the stairs and spend time just enjoying life on the deck. We think he could better survey his territory from that height. After maybe a half hour, he would decend and wobble off towards a different area of the woods where, I imagine, his lady friend waited for him.
Life in the woods is never dull or quiet!