wildlife art

Phoenix Athens Residency Artwork 10

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A photo of a section of a cave wall near where I harvested my pigment - this spot had just a couple of red ochre ribbons, but deeper into the cave there was a bigger deposit.

I started making the substrate for this piece in Athens, but I continued it after my return home and painted it here! The background is special - the substrate is made of white concrete mixed with natural cave pigment I harvested at in an abandoned silver mine tunnel on my friend’s monastery grounds and then processed into powder. I believe it is red ochre, which is one of the original archaic pigments used in ancient cave paintings. I also applied the red ochre to the surface for extra pigmentation.

The subject matter is a wild adult male red fox (Vulpes vulpes) which I got to observe on Mount Lycabettus due to the kindness of my field biologist friend Dimitris! He discovered that this fox shifts dens around 8am when the sun begins to infiltrate his early morning den; the one he moves into a narrow cave tunnel with two openings in a cliff face. Watching him navigate an almost sheer rock wall to get to that second den was witnessing a truly skilled athlete in action.

I like that the substrate and the subject both have caves in common, and though I glazed the whole of the fox irises with gold, a portion of them beneath the glaze are just the raw red ochre. I managed to finish this piece in time to install it in my Materiality show in Eppley Art Gallery, so it’s on display there through October 7th if you’d like to see it in person!

This is Ancient Origins, acrylic, artist-harvested red ochre natural cave pigment, and concrete on recycled wood round, 17.5x17.5x.75”, 2023.

Shelby Prindaville's acrylic painting of a red fox atop artist-harvested natural red ochre cave pigment and concrete on a recycled wood round.

Phoenix Athens Residency Artwork 9

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Having that one hoopoe sunbathe in what felt pointedly for me was a genuinely amazing experience, and even though I think the pose is somewhat challenging for viewers, I knew I needed to paint it.

Each time I’d walked past or into olive wood stores, I considered if I wanted to purchase an olive wood slab to use as a substrate. There were a lot of slabs that had been made into cutting boards, complete with runoff depressions and handles, but several stores offered flush slabs (I imagine with the intended usage being cheese and serving boards). One day, I was in another olive wood shop and I decided to sift through all of their flush slabs, and I found one with a really compelling wood grain design that in my mind referenced the hot summer Mount Lycabettus landscape, and I could envision putting the sunbathing hoopoe atop it. It was a smaller slab than I ideally wanted, but then again, whatever I acquired would have to fit in my luggage… and size was important but so was the wood grain design - and this one was pretty perfect. I dithered about it for a little bit, and then decided to take the plunge and get it. Post-purchase, I went into another olive wood store to see if I’d immediately regret my choice by finding a better slab, but they did not have one that positively compared with mine so I took that as a win and stopped second-guessing it.

The hoopoe’s distinctive, high-contrast plumage is particular enough that on this and the previous hoopoe painting I needed to do a full shaded drawing first (rather than merely a contour drawing, which is what I typically can get away with). As I tell my students, time management is crucial to being a productive, well-compensated artist - the faster you can finish a piece while keeping high standards, the sooner you can begin the next. The only other painting in recent memory that I’ve done a full shaded drawing for is Velocity, my painted turtle painting.

The underlying drawing, which I think gives you some insight into the difficulties I faced working atop this high-contrast substrate.

Drawing my sunbathing hoopoe on top of the olive wood was really difficult. Not in terms of making marks - that was fine! - but in terms of accurately putting a competing design on top of the loud wood grain already present. Even the placement and size itself was difficult to determine! Then once I began, sometimes the drawing perfectly aligned with the wood grain, which itself was startling and caused me to second-guess my work, but other times I had to dismiss what the wood grain was doing and superimpose a different line.

The painting was also tedious, in that the smaller-than-desired size of the slab meant the artwork too was a bit smaller than I wanted and I had to use my three smallest brushes to paint the whole piece. I also needed to layer the paint and build it up, as the high-contrast wood grain design bled through my first few layers of paint (particularly the white areas). I’d guess the white areas have at least six applications of white paint to achieve my desired opacity.

After I added the sun, it looked too anemic; a simple gold circle in the olive wood sky blended in too much. I slept on it, and the next day I decided to add a darker gradient halo to the sun. This detail was instrumental; I am really pleased with how much it enhanced the artwork.

I managed to finish this piece just before my show reception, so I snuck it into the show by placing it on a small stand on the gallery display counter. A number of viewers remarked at how natural and easy the piece looks in that it all flows and sits exactly where it should. Given how difficult it was to execute, that was rewarding to hear.

The field biologist who had taken me on a couple Mount Lycabettus hikes and knew I was painting hoopoes arrived and brought with him some sparrowhawk and hoopoe feathers he’d found. One of the wing feathers he brought perfectly aligns with my painting, which is really cool. I toyed with the idea of incorporating it into the painting, but decided not to do so (yet, anyway!).

This is Radiance, acrylic on natural olive wood slab, 7.5x16.5x.75", 2023.

Shelby Prindaville's acrylic on olive wood slab painting of a sunbathing hoopoe.

Phoenix Athens Residency Artwork 7

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This painting was the third I started… but the seventh to finish! Many people have asked me how long it takes to finish a piece of artwork, and the answer is harder to provide than they might think because I’m usually working on multiple pieces at a time and each one’s process and progress looks different.

The substrate for this is once again papyrus, but for the first time I experimented with using crackle paste. This was particularly experimental in that you’re supposed to use crackle paste only atop rigid surfaces, and papyrus is flexible. This meant that as the crackle paste seized, it actually buckled the papyrus beneath, leading to less dramatic cracking in the paste but creating a very irregular topography and shrinking the overall dimensions of the papyrus. Painting a relatively detailed and representational subject on this surface was really difficult, which led to me fighting with it for weeks. I might’ve even abandoned it, except every visitor to my studio remarked on how much they looked forward to seeing it finished and that it was already a favorite! Eventually, I made peace with it and could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I am really pleased with how it turned out; my studio guests were right to urge me to complete it! Also from a completionist angle, my Mount Lycabettus tortoise times were always spent with two tortoises - I painted the larger, presumed male tortoise on the antique tiles, and this papryus piece depicts his smaller, presumably female companion. It feels nice to have finished portraits of each of them.

This is a tentative title: Heritage, acrylic and crackle paste on papyrus, 15.5x21.75", 2023.

Shelby Prindaville's acrylic and crackle paste on papyrus painting of a marginated tortoise.

Phoenix Athens Residency Artwork 6

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After my sparrowhawk photoshoot the second day with my new field biologist friend, I thought I might want to pay homage to the spotting scope’s field of view by working on a circular composition. Dimitri helpfully found me some wood-and-cardboard spools in the neighborhood trash, and he salvaged them. After taking them apart (they were bolted together), there were two wooden circles on each end. One was flush with holes for the bolts and center, and one had an extra central wooden ledge around the center along with the requisite holes. The Phoenix Athens residency director Dimitri is really into working with concrete, and I like trying new media so I embraced his suggestion to test it out!

I cut down a piece of masonite and glued it to the back, and then put some mesh over the top of the holes to help strengthen the cement’s fill of them. I then mixed up the concrete and added some crushed local snail shells I had collected on Mount Lycabettus as well.

The concrete adhered pretty well, but it wasn’t very level on the surface. I filled in most of the worst of the cavities with matte medium and then went to work drawing and painting atop it! I decided on a composition with three of the Eurasian sparrowhawk chicks, and I added a subtle dark vignette as another nod to the spotting scope.

I confess I am very nervous about how any of these rounds will handle the transit back, as they slightly exceed the width of my largest suitcase; it is flexible, so I can squeeze them in, but I can’t really do anything about their getting hit on those two sides. I can pad out the top and bottom, at least! I’m hoping they’ll be OK, but if they break, I hope they break in such a way that I can try to patch the pieces à la the archaeological fragmented displays I’ve admired in Athenian museums.

This is Realms, acrylic, concrete, and crushed snail shells on recycled wood round, 17.5x17.5x.75”, 2023.

Shelby Prindaville's circular acrylic and concrete on wooden panel painting of three Eurasian sparrowhawk chicks.

Phoenix Athens Residency Artwork 4

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I am so happy with how this overall project turned out! The tiles fought hard to keep their slick glass surfaces and people kept trying to persuade me to give up, but after a lot of failed attempts, I eventually prevailed in removing the top-most surface but leaving most of the glaze, crackle, and chip defects (and adding more defects of my own in the process).

From conception, I had planned on a nine-tile ceramic artwork and a five-tile-and-fragment ceramic artwork. One of the whole tiles ended up completely ruined while at the second sandblasting facility, so I was down to nine and four. I was initially pretty sure my nine-tile square artwork was going to be a tortoise, but I tried out a variety of compositions… and confirmed that a tortoise was my favorite option!

This project is exciting in that it is an experimental fusion between ceramics and painting, and it also uses as its substrate antique tiles from the 1840s. The multiple components means that I can display this piece in infinite ways; the “core composition” is of course the most resolved option but irregular spacing and/or scrambling encourages additional viewer appreciation for the artistry of each tile in its own right as well as introduces additional room for conceptual narratives around ecology, encroaching human environments into the natural world, negative space, abstraction, and time.

The subject is the larger, presumably male adult marginated tortoise I met on Mount Lycabettus - at least one group of locals call him Petros. When I was thinking about what to title this piece, I realized that marginated also means “marked or characterized by margins,” such that the word describes both the subject and substrate and therefore seemed to me to be the perfect title.

Marginated, acrylic on nine partially deglazed 19th century ceramic tiles, variable display dimensions with core dimensions of 16x16x.25", 2023.

Shelby Prindaville’s acrylic painting of a marginated tortoise on nine partially deglazed 19th century tiles, displayed in the core dimensions.

Shelby Prindaville’s acrylic painting of a marginated tortoise on nine partially deglazed 19th century tiles, displayed in a more conceptual, open configuration.

Phoenix Athens Residency Artwork 3

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This is my first Eurasian hoopoe artwork! It is painted on a natural tree trunk slice which I obtained here in Athens. The central element, the “seed,” is the unaltered center-most part of the wood as well as its hollow. It also subtly references the “mati” or “evil eye” which is a prevalent design in Greece.

I plan to paint at least one, maybe two more hoopoe pieces… though I may not have time to complete them while I’m here in Athens. We’ll see!

The Seed, acrylic on tree trunk slice, 15.25x15.5x1”, 2023.

Shelby Prindaville’s acrylic painting atop a tree trunk slice of two hoopoes on a branch.

Phoenix Athens Residency Artwork 2

This is my second finished painting completed as an artist in residence at Phoenix Athens in Greece! It depicts the wild sparrowhawk mother of the chick I previously painted. The Eurasian sparrowhawk’s scientific name is Accipiter nisus, with “accipiter” being Latin for hawk and “Nisus” due to the Greek myth of King Nisus/Nisos (who in most versions of the myth is turned into a raptor upon his daughter’s betrayal).

I’ve always been interested in syncretism and occasionally infuse religious references into my artwork. Working within various European, Greek, and Egyptian traditions and media and adding my own conservation-based values into the mix here, I was inspired to give this female sparrowhawk a halo. The word “halo” comes from the Greek language and is artistically used for Greek deities including Helios, Eos, and Eosphorous, but the stylization I gave mine is more traditionally associated with Christianity though it is believed to have originated in Iran.

This is Syncretism, acrylic on papyrus, 24x16.5”, 2023.

Shelby Prindaville’s acrylic on papyrus painting of a female adult Eurasian sparrowhawk with a halo, titled “Syncretism," 2023.

Phoenix Athens Residency Artwork 1

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Here is my first finished painting completed as an artist in residence at Phoenix Athens in Greece! It depicts a wild sparrowhawk chick in a somewhat stylized nest of branches.

This is Potential, acrylic on papyrus, 24x16.5”, 2023.

Shelby Prindaville’s painting of a wild Eurasian sparrowhawk chick on papryus.

I've Finished a New LSU SVM Artwork: Overlooked!

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I’m beginning a new artist residency, but I still have some paintings I’d like to do from my summer 2022 artist residency at the Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine so I worked on them before I headed out! Last summer I had begun, but not yet finished, the contour drawing underpinning this painting of two juvenile possums. I worked on the background this past fall, and began to paint it at the beginning of this summer! The background is a chemical stain from the anatomy lab; I’ve had some trouble with the lightfastness of the veterinary stains I’ve tried in the past, which is why I gave this one so much time between setting it down and painting atop it! Both due to the time involved and my research, I have more faith in this particular stain’s staying power. This stain is called orcein and is derived from lichens, and it has been used as a fabric dye in addition to scientific usages.

This is Overlooked, acrylic and orcein stain from the LSU SVM anatomy lab on Aquabord panel, 24x18x1.5”, 2023.

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 20 Process

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Here are a couple of photos of the in-progress Vulture Sculpture! In the first image, you can see how I built an internal armature out of pink styrofoam insulation, wire, and disposable chopsticks. Armatures are really helpful for a few reasons: A) they provide structure and support to bolster strength and keep the clay from sagging, B) they weigh a lot less than clay which makes the piece-in-progress lighter so it puts less stress on weight-bearing areas while wet/uncured C) if you leave the armature inside - like you can do with QuickCure Clay - the finished piece is lighter than if it were solid clay which is typically desirable, and finally D) the armature materials usually cost less than using an equivalent amount of clay.

Then in the second image, it’s midway along; I’m still sculpting the QCC (note the head and wings are unfinished) but it’s taking real shape and I’ve already incorporated the artificial turf, though I have yet to “mold” it with the heat gun. Finally, there’s the finished piece in a similar orientation for comparison!

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 20

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This is the final piece of artwork I completed on-site at LSU Vet Med during my two-month summer 2022 residency! I think finishing 20 exhibitable pieces including mixed media paintings, a relief, ceramics, and a sculpture in 7 weeks is a remarkable feat, so I am very happy with my productivity.

I worked right up until the day of the exhibition opening on this piece, but I managed to get it “finished” in time - I put that in quotes as I still needed to briefly borrow it back from the exhibition midway through to put a protective varnish on top!

I had wanted to do a sculpture this whole time because A) I’ve always liked putting on exhibitions that have multiple disciplines and media on display to more deeply engage a broad viewership, B) I wanted to really highlight QuickCure Clay, as I’d helped create it with Dr. John Pojman at LSU a decade ago and it felt right to use it in at least a couple of pieces this summer, and C) I had been given a couple pieces of artificial turf from the wildlife hospital that I wanted to incorporate into artwork in some way, and relatively early on I had a lightbulb moment wherein I thought the astroturf had vulture neck-feather vibes! It worked very well, in that a lot of people couldn’t figure out where the artificial turf was used and at least one viewer told me she thought I thought the gravel I used as an installation aid was astroturf. Another viewer asked me if this was a taxidermied piece, which made me feel really good about the likeness!

I titled this piece Vulture Sculpture mostly because I didn’t have time to think about titling it when I had to make the show labels (I didn’t even think it was likely to get finished for it!), but I also do like the rhyme and the clear identification of the species of the bird. I sold this sculpture that same evening to the fabulous Dr. Mark Mitchell from Wildlife and ZooMed and his partner Dr. Lorrie Hale Mitchell from Integrative Medicine! They very kindly were willing to let me take it on exhibit first (as I’m doing with the rest of the sold paintings), but I made some delicate choices with this piece - the claws, the beak tip - that meant I thought it best to let them just take it after my LSU Vet Med solo show came down instead of potentially injuring the piece in shipping.

This is Vulture Sculpture, a mixed media sculpture of a black vulture including QuickCure Clay and ZooMed’s artificial turf, 13.5" x 7.5" x 20.5", 2022.