Painting My World

4 x 4 inches - Oil on Panel This is my oil painting of a Common Raven.  In 2003, Vladimir Putin visited the Tower of London in the UK, a legendary castle that employs a Ravenmaster to care for a minimum of six ravens whose sole purpose is to prevent the Tower from crumbling and the kingdom from suffering great harm should they, the ravens, ever leave. It’s quite a superstition, but the Brits take it seriously.  During Putin’s visit, he was greeted by a 12-year old raven named Thor who was perched on the steps that lead up to the White Tower. Thor said “Good morning” to the Russian president. It wasn’t an unusual reception, Thor was known to greet anybody; but what the president thought about the raven’s greeting is unknown. One source described Putin as being “taken aback”.  There are all sorts of stories about ravens being harbingers of death or impending doom, so it might be interesting to know that Putin has never returned to the Tower of London. Would another trip res...

  Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches            Last year, Red Crossbills visited my feeders containing black oil sunflower seeds between May 15 and May 28th. Those sightings remain the only time I've seen these perfectly-named birds.       Compared to most birds, there’s a lot more to learn about Red Crossbills. The following paragraph taken from allaboutbirds.org [accessed Feb. 10, 2025] summarizes this bird well.       "Traditionally considered a single species of multiple races, Loxia curvirostra may actually comprise more than half a dozen separate species—each of them showing a mix of traits so close to the others that they are inseparable in the field. Even taxonomists with specimens in the hand are often uncertain of what they have. Birds of different bill sizes and shapes apparently prefer different conifer species (the smallest types feeding on hemlocks, the largest on white pines), but the differences must be...

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches      This is a black and white (sort of) oil painting of an Eastern Phoebe. A trip to William O’Brien State Park last September brought windy and hot conditions for a six-mile birding walk. I spotted this bird along the Wedge Hill Savanna Trail perched on a branch over water, sallying for bugs.       I remember that day well. It was too windy for decent birding, and the temperatures were between 76-80˚ F. For me, that’s hot; and without the wind, I wouldn’t have walked as far as I had. Oftentimes, when I see a bird by itself, especially during migration, I often wonder about its circumstances. Eastern Phoebes leave Minnesota for warmer climes in the fall. How far would this one travel? Why was it alone? Was it a male or female? Was it cursing the wind like I was? Perhaps bugs were easier to catch on windy days. Maybe they have less control in the wind, making them easier prey. Or maybe they’re harder to find, hunkered down o...

  Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches

Oil in Panel - 4 x 4 inches      It’s New Year’s Eve and some of you might be indulging in celebratory food for the occasion. So, it seems appropriate to bring up the variety of ways birds feed their young... or don't.       There are birds that feed their young for months, some only a matter of weeks, and then there are those that don’t feed their chicks at all. Bald eagles are examples of birds who feed their young for months before they fledge. On the opposite spectrum, brush turkeys don’t feed theirs at all. Their babies must fend for themselves upon hatching in order to survive. That’s right. No parental help whatsoever. Chicks, find your own food, we’re outta here, says mom and dad. Crazy, right?       When it comes to Eastern Towhees, they’ll feed their young for almost two weeks before fledging occurs. Nothing unusual about that. However, Eastern Towhees belong to a group of birds that will feed other bird species, too. The...

 Oil on Panel - 16 x 20 inches. This is my oil painting of female Bobolink. My photograph of her alongside Dart Road in Minnesota's Sax-Zim Bog in July of 2022 served as my reference.  Below is a poem about Bobolinks written by the distinguished poet William Cullen Bryant in March of 1855. It was published in Putnam's Magazine that same year. Punctuation, spelling and grammar were left unchanged. ROBERT OF LINCOLN. Merrily swinging on brier and weed,    Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain-side or mead,    Robert of Lincoln is telling his name :       Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,       Spink, spank, spink ; Snug and safe is that nest of ours, Hidden among the summer flowers.                   Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest,    Wearing a bright black wedding-coat ; White are his shoulders and white his crest.    Hear him call in h...

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      This is an oil painting of a Canada Jay as seen in Sax-Zim Bog, MN, during a visit in January, 2022. These birds have several defining characteristics. I was struck by the number of nicknames this bird has. Whiskey Jack may be its most common nickname, a word derived from the Indigenous North American Cree word ‘Wisakedjak’ meaning “an adventurous and humorous trickster afforded prestige as a teacher to humankind. Wisakedjak is also rebellious.” (Robinson, 2018) Other nicknames include camp robber, moose bird, meat hawk, venison bird, and gorby. Gray Jay was its official name for a while, and I’ve heard that name used often.       Canada Jays live in cold climates and can be found in every Canadian province, and in higher elevations in the western United States, as well as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Upper Michigan, Maine, and New Hampshire. They are non-migratory, but occasionally irrupt southward. They will eat just about...

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches. This male Mourning Warbler was one of my highlights in 2024. First heard and spotted on May 28th, it sang loudly over the course of 2-3 weeks in one corner of my woods. I never spotted the female, but I suspect she was around due to the longevity of the male’s presence. The last date I heard the male singing was July 1st.  Mourning Warblers require heterogeneous second-growth forests. The shrubby hillside area where this bird hung out contains quaking aspens, crabapples, birches, a young red oak, a scotch pine, red and white pines, spruce, diamond and pussy willows, and neighboring European buckthorn. Generally, the area is clear of a dense understory; large-leaved asters cover a fair portion of nearby sunny spots. A small brush pile, a large pine needle pile, and a fallen spruce skirt the edges where this bird lingered. Part of the space was once completely covered with invasive common tansy. Having removed 99% of that, it’s nice to see the asters rega...

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches. Just before the arrival of spring in 2018, American Crows were creating a ruckus outside of my window while I was eating breakfast. Never one to miss an opportunity to explore the reason why crows are in a tizzy, the commotion led me to observe this Great Gray Owl perched in a tree just feet away from my house. It stayed low in the branches and slowly moved southbound from tree to tree. By the time I got dressed for the outdoors, the owl was perched across the road in a dense thicket, well hidden. The crows had moved on by then. The silence of the winter’s morning, except for a passerby or two, left me alone with this beautiful owl, and I was able to snap some decent photographs.  My yard has its share of voles, one of this bird’s favorite food. Vole tunnels abound and are especially visible after the first snowfall of the season, as long as it’s a light snowfall. One or two inches of snow will oftentimes display dozens of criss-crossing, irregular pat...

Minnesota State Fair Juried Art Exhibition,  Aug. 22 - Labor Day, 2024 First Glance Event: Tues., Aug. 20, 2024, 5:00 - 6:30 p.m. Fine Arts Building (the corner of Randall Ave. and Cosgrove St.) Minnesota State Fairgrounds The Minnesota State Fair Foundation 501(c)(3) invites artists, friends, family and art enthusiasts to support the future of the arts at the Minnesota State Fair through the ticketed event, First Glance. This is your chance to get a first look at the selected works and purchase artwork prior to the Minnesota State Fair opening. Tickets are available for purchase at msffoundation.org or by calling (651) 288-4323. All attendees for the First Glance Event must have a ticket.  Showing "Superior Reflections" Oil, 12 x 24 inches Artwork will be on view for the duration of the Minnesota State Fair. Entrance to the Fine Arts Building is free with your State Fair ticket during regular State Fair hours.

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      This is an oil painting of a female Brewer’s Blackbird, a species of bird quite unfamiliar to me. I am grateful for the research available, there’s always more to learn!       Depending on what part of the country you live in, these birds can be common and perhaps a nuisance as they await alongside humans for the opening of big box stores. In Seattle, for instance, once the doors open at a mega-superstore, they fly in to seek shelter from the elements or to score crumbs off the floor from its indoor café.       My experience with Brewer’s Blackbirds is very different. I’ve never seen them waiting for stores to open, let alone hanging out anywhere near them in my area. The invasive House Sparrow makes up for that. But on July 5th, I observed two female Brewer's Blackbirds tending to a nesting site in Sax-Zim Bog in northern Minnesota, a location far from urbanization.       The tw...

Showing "Ballyhoo" – 16 x 12 inches – oil. Art on the Edge, 18th Annual Juried Exhibition Aug. 8 - Sept. 9, 2024 The Edge Gallery 101 2nd Ave. Bigfork, MN 56628

  Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches. “The bluebird comes, and with his warble drills the ice,  and sets free the rivers and ponds and frozen ground.” - Henry David Thoreau        The Eastern Bluebird belongs to the family of thrushes, and is one of 167 species of thrushes found throughout the world. In North America, its arrival in spring is a welcome sight to those that live in the open country, and a trip to Wild River State Park in May of this year brought several sightings of Eastern Bluebirds. The male depicted in my painting above was hanging around a cavity in an old pine tree (photo below) along the Amador Prairie Loop, alongside a female.       These days, most people associate bluebirds with nest boxes because of efforts to save the species from extinction. Nest boxes were erected all over eastern North America and Bermuda from the 1970s and onward to help the bluebird when it was discovered that two invasive species, House Sparrows ...

 Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      Male Hooded Mergansers have interesting mating dances, they’re worth a look on youtube and may make this bird memorable, especially if you've never seen one. This particular lone merganser visited my neck of the woods just after 7 am on Monday, April 29th. I was able to take several photos while disguised in dark clothing and hiding behind trees. The noise of the wind, rain, and rushing creek helped too, but I am quite certain this duck knew of my presence even though I oftentimes like to think I'm invisible. It is arrogant, or perhaps delusional, but sometimes I get lucky.       Luck allowed me to blend in with a tree, so much so that I became a tree while photographing this bird. Soon, two gray squirrels were at my feet. Not wanting to get squirrelitis (is that a thing?), I was going to have to move because I didn’t want them realizing I wasn’t a tree after it was too late. This meant sacrificing my cover. But...

  Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches. I have determined that this bird, the male Bobolink, is my father-in-law's favorite bird. Why? He is a man, his name is Bob, and he is a passionate golfer. Sometimes in life, a little humor and a break from the norm can be a welcome reprieve. Happy Friday, everyone! Or Saturday, depending on where you are in the world ;)

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      For the first time in ten winters at my home in Duluth, MN, American Tree Sparrows have stuck around all season, and that is most likely because we had very little snowfall. Just how little? Before the snowstorm of March 25th, Duluth was over 40 inches below normal, giving these seed-loving birds lots of areas to forage from bare ground, month after month.       In addition to a generally snowless winter, Duluth’s just experienced its second warmest winter on record. In all likelihood, the record would have fallen had the current weather station’s locale been in the same spot as it was in 1877-78, the winter that still covets first place. Currently, official temperatures are recorded at the Duluth International Airport, but it is approximately 5 miles further inland from the old weather station on Superior Street, just 1000 feet from Lake Superior. If anyone took temperature records at the old location, it would be int...

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      Almost 8-1/2 years after moving to our home in Duluth, I finally saw wild turkeys in my yard. But if I had lived here in the early 1970s, I wouldn’t have seen any because they were wiped out by hunting and habitat loss throughout all of Minnesota.       Thankfully, enough people cared about their return, and efforts to reintroduce turkeys to Minnesota by the DNR were successful in 1973 when twenty-nine wild birds were transported from Missouri to southeastern Minnesota. Eventually, that small flock grew and more turkeys were moved to other parts of the state. There’s a high probability that the turkey represented in my painting came from the original twenty-nine, according to James Burnham, a biologist from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.       This particular bird depicted in my painting was a member of a flock of five that visited my bird feeders’ spoils on Oct. 26, 2023. They are the largest ...

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      This is an oil painting of a Blue-headed Vireo. These birds do not display plumage dimorphism, meaning there is no coloration difference between males and females, i.e. they are monomorphic. Therefore, it’s a toss up whether this particular bird as seen on Oct. 1, 2021, was a male or female.       An interesting discovery by Canadian ornithologist Bridget Stutchbury of Toronto’s York University found that female Blue-headed Vireos venture out from their nesting territories to mate with other males after their young fledge, all the while their first mate attends to the remainder of the youngsters’ needs.       In the 1936 edition of Birds of America by T. Gilbert Pearson, the author writes the following about this bird: “It does not avoid mankind but dwells near him only when he lives in its favorite forest retreats. Like some other species it has proved so confiding at times as to allow a person to ...

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      This is an oil painting of a male Wood Duck. A couple of interesting tidbits about this bird is that their young are born precocial, which means they're able to survive almost immediately without the help of their parents. The opposite of precocial is altricial – baby robins and humans are examples of altricial species. Both need copious amounts of help to survive.      Also interesting is that Wood Ducks will eat acorns and other nuts as part of their diet. Maybe one day when my young oak trees grow up, these ducks will have more options for nourishment during their stopovers at my home besides insects and arthropods.

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches. This small oil painting of a Field Sparrow is from the Upper Sioux Agency State Park near Granite Falls, Minnesota. I visited this park in 2021, but it is now permanently closed as of February 16, 2024. In a first-ever for the state of Minnesota, ownership of a state park has been transferred to a Native American community, specifically the Dakota people of the Upper Sioux. Per the Minnesota DNR, “The Upper Sioux Community has a longstanding request to the State of Minnesota that the land at Upper Sioux Agency State Park (USASP) be returned to the Upper Sioux Community, given the extraordinary significance of this land to the tribal community. The land is the site of starvation and death of Dakota people during the summer of 1862, when the U.S. Government failed to provide food promised to the Dakota by treaty. Continuing to operate the land as a recreational use site is inconsistent with this profound history.”  This particular sparrow was perched on a...

 Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches. This is an oil painting of an American Tree Sparrow. At my home in Duluth, winter has been extraordinarily warm which could be the reason a flock of 3-6 of these birds have stuck around all season. It is an observational "first" at my residence of 10 years. There are slight differences in range maps as to where this bird normally spends its winters. One map shows Duluth on the edge of where this bird is either common or uncommon in winter; the other map indicates this bird is common in my neck of the woods. When the weather warms and the snow melts in the coming weeks (there is limited snow now), these birds will fly to northern Alaska for their breeding season. References Cornell Lab of Ornithology. All About Birds. American Tree Sparrow. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Retrieved Feb. 9, 2024 from https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Tree_Sparrow/maps-range National Audubon Society. American Tree Sparrow. New York, New York...

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      This is an oil painting of a Broad-winged Hawk as seen in my woods on May 12, 2022. During the fall, they migrate in such immense numbers their flocks have been called a “river of raptors” – flying through Veracruz, Mexico, and Panama to the Andean forests of Colombia and Bolivia. At my home, I have oftentimes gotten out of my chair upon hearing this hawk outside of my window, only to find a Blue Jay imitating it perfectly.      Their migration route spans approximately 4,000 miles and they travel around 70 miles per day. If this one came directly from the south of my home, it would have been in Burnett County, Wisconsin, the day prior. References Epic Journeys. (2021, Winter) Living Bird, 40 (1), 26. Kricher, J. C. (2020).  Peterson reference guide to bird behavior.  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      This is my oil painting of an immature Harris’s Sparrow. It’s a bird that will soon have a new name. That’s because the American Ornithological Society recently decided to rename every bird that was named after a person. Starting this year, the process of renaming approximately 152 North American birds will commence.       This bird was originally named by John James Audubon after his friend Edward Harris. Harris provided Audubon with financial assistance for the publication of his book, Birds of America . Strikingly, it was not Audubon or Harris who originally discovered this bird, it was Thomas Nuttall in 1834. He named the bird “Mourning Finch.” Although the word mourning appropriately describes this bird’s non-juvenile plumage (the face, cap, and neck of adult birds are black, perhaps representing the togas worn by humans as far back as the ancient Romans to mourn the loss of a loved one), this bird is not a finch....