After moving to Santa Barbara in 2011, retired biologist and lifelong artist Emil Morhardt found a new muse in the form of plovers, pelicans, and other avians inhabiting the city’s shoreline.
“[I] realized that the birds on the beach were approachable, relatively easy to photograph, and had very interesting behaviors,” said Morhardt, who upgraded his camera at the time and began photographing the coastal birds, providing reference material for his acrylic portraits.
“Painting allows me to simplify the images that I get from the camera, with the intent of representing the unadorned fundamental essence of the bird,” Morhardt said. “Every species, I’ve found, has its own personality, as do individuals within the species, so there’s no shortage of interesting material to paint.”
Morhardt learned to paint at an early age from his father, a watercolorist and art teacher, while growing up in Bishop. Long before turning his attention to bird portraits, most of the artist’s early acrylic works were landscapes. After moving to the Bay Area in the late ’70s, Morhardt enjoyed capturing locales in San Francisco and the Eastern Sierra during his free time, while working as an operations director for an environmental consulting firm.
Morhardt’s passion for the environment carried over to his next gig, teaching environmental biology at Claremont McKenna College, which he retired from in 2017. It’s a passion that carried over to his art as well, one that has only amplified in response to an “unrelenting onslaught of bad environmental news” over the last decade, Morhardt said.
“Abundant wild birds are to me the essence of a healthy natural environment,” Morhardt said. “And documenting them living their complicated lives is an effective antidote to all the time I’ve spent thinking about the gradual degradation of the environment that I’ve seen all over the world.”
Some of Morhardt’s most recent bird portraits will be showcased in a new duo show, Feathers and Fur, at Gallery Los Olivos, opening Sept. 1. Fellow Santa Barbara-based artist Claudia Chapman is providing the fur to complement Morhardt’s feathers, although she paints quite a few birds herself.
“I love to paint wild cats and all kinds of birds,” Chapman told the Sun. “But I’ve also painted rhinos, an elephant, zebras, and Icelandic horses.
“I only paint what I’ve seen,” added Chapman, who has traveled extensively to observe and photograph wildlife, journeying to Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Iceland, among other destinations. She’s also visited a few national parks closer to home.
All of Chapman’s animal portraits on display in Feathers and Fur are oils, painted on either canvas or linen.
“Even though it’s slow going for the most part, I enjoy the process of painting in oil,” Chapman said. “Many famous wildlife artists have turned to acrylics because they are easier to thin, dry faster, etc.”
Like Morhardt, Chapman strives to capture personality in her works, and usually depicts animals interacting with each other. Juvenile Romp, for example, depicts two playful leopards; one trying to reach the other, perched on a tree above. In Item of Interest, two eagles share a view from their neighboring branches.
Also similar to Morhardt, Chapman is driven by concern for animals and preserving their natural environments.
“It breaks my heart to know about jungle clearings to make way for palm oil and other farms, even less severe human encroachment, and now climate change,” Chapman said. “We will see big changes and extinctions happening must faster now.”
Chapman’s love for animals began at a young age, around the same time she realized how much she loved drawing and painting, the artist said.
“I believe my sixth grade teacher saw that I liked to draw, so she had me paint a leopard on a large mural-sized paper,” Chapman said. “We were studying jungles at the time. I believe that’s what sparked me.”
Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood’s favorite Muppet is Animal. Send comments to cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 29 – Sep 5, 2019.
