Wildlife

These are pictures of wildlife I have “encountered”- a blue (?) whale off the coast of Western Mexico, a pronghorn antelope near the Black Hills of South Dakota, and a moose in Yellowstone National Park.  The moose just stood in this same position by the lake for probably hours, staring off onto the water.  Pensive or senile, I wonder?

Wildlife: Seeing a wild animal is an all too rare experience (especially in the US), and one that gets me every time.  There is something about seeing a being of another species, minding its own business, perhaps aware but not much concerned with our presence that reminds us of an important (and sometimes gratifying) reality: that despite how we engineer our ideal environments and surround ourselves with our own kind, our entire population barely registers in terms of global biodiversity.

Foxes (courtesy of Nat Geo)

Cai Guo-Qiang

I saw these pieces at the Guggenheim in NYC, it was the best exhibition I’ve seen in person.  He has a truly extraordinary website … http://caiguoqiang.com/

Desert Wolves

I drew this in either 2009 or 2010.  I think at the time I was just starting to think about swarms and I had just finished a series of small drawings based on desert patterns, including those found in yucca plants.  This is one of the few pieces I have made without using a reference image – dog type creatures might have been one of the few animals I thought I could draw from memory. In retrospect, this make sense.  Considering that modern humans and domestic dogs *may* have co-evolved, the stock image of a dog could simply be more readily recalled from our cognitive visual archives than any other animal.