Feathers and Fur, a new duo exhibition featuring paintings by local artists Emil Morhardt and Claudia Chapman, will debut at Gallery Los Olivos on Sunday, Sept. 1, and run through Tuesday, Oct. 1. Both Santa Barbara-based artists were inspired by the beauty and expressive nature of wild birds and mammals while creating the show’s paintings on canvas.
Morhardt, also a professional ecologist, bases his acrylic portraits on photographs of birds he’s taken himself, according to the gallery.
“Lately I’ve been thinking about my long career as an ecologist and climate change scientist and the subtle ways it seems to be driving me to paint birds,” Morhardt said in a press release. “As a sort of antidote to the unrelenting onslaught of bad environmental news.
“My thoughts were amplified recently on a trip aboard the National Geographic Orion from Tahiti to the Marquesas Islands,” he added. “This is a lightly populated and largely undisturbed part of the watery world, full of marine life. It felt good to celebrate what we have rather than bemoan what has been lost.”
Like Morhardt, Chapman travels far and wide for artistic inspiration to record animals in their natural settings, while also supporting efforts to preserve their environments.
“I strive to capture and preserve a fascinating moment in nature in my paintings,” Chapman said in the release. “When I focus on some aspect of the interaction of animals in their environment, and the forces pressing on both, it brings out incredible emotions of excitement, wonder, awe, and a strong drive to somehow preserve what is left of the natural world.”
For more info on Feathers and Fur, call Gallery Los Olivos at (805) 688-7517 or visit gallerylosolivos.com. The gallery is located at 2920 Grand Ave., Los Olivos.
This article appears in Aug 22-29, 2019.