Wild at Art, May 2024

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The past year has been wild indeed! For most of the year, each week has brought the challenge of creating the Wild Wednesday photo essays. This has been a wonderful opportunity for me to use my extensive photo library (constantly adding new material, which gets me out in nature with an inquiring eye) and my naturalist background to help inspire and inform others about the remarkable natural world we live in.

It has also helped increase awareness of the value of conservation no matter where we live. My main focus has been on my homeland—the Granite Dells or Prescott, Arizona—but also expanding awareness across the globe, especially with respect to East Africa, where I have led safaris for 45 years!

The Natural History Institute invited me to exhibit a one-person art show on “Art in the Service of Conservation” from October 27, 2023 through January 12, 2024. My public presentation allowed me to describe in images and words my lifelong progression as a conservation biologist, with art being an important element of my voice. My personal history and many examples of my paintings are included. You may view the video of my talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzBS5oRTNoo

My friend Kitty Harvill, co-founder of Artists and Biologists Unite for Nature (ABUN), recommended me to the editors of CanvasRebel (“Conversations with Entrepreneurs, Artists & Creatives”). Here is my interview: https://canvasrebel.com/meet-walt-anderson/ I was asked about the most meaningful project I’ve worked on, and it gave me the opportunity to describe my connections with Prescott College, Artists for Conservation, ABUN, the Sutter Buttes of California, Save the Dells, and the Granite Dells of Arizona.

This coming week, I will join artists Rebecca Davis/Roger Asay, Jan Marshall, and Tony Brown for the inaugural art show at the new Cicada Gallery on the campus of Prescott College (234 Grove Avenue). The opening reception is from 4:30-6 on May 2 (RSVP to Abby.yost@prescott.edu). The show will be open to the public from May 3 – 30 from 10-noon, 1-4 Monday – Friday. I personally will be staffing the gallery on Thursdays (May 9, 16, 23, 30), and others will be there on the other weekdays.

Leopard, Acrylic 16x20 framed
Leopard, Acrylic 16×20 framed

Wild at Heart–Art & Nature

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David Cavagnaro in his forewords to my Sutter Buttes books wrote: “A naturalist, I think, is first a person of the earth, a shaman really, one who feels as well as sees, one who simply knows with greater depth and breadth than intellect alone can muster. Second, a naturalist is an interpreter, one who can translate the complex language of nature into the vocabulary of the common man, who can reach out to us from the heart of the natural world and lead us in.”

We can interpret with the language of science, but we can also appeal to the emotions through the language of art. Together, they are the tools of a naturalist, the means by which we draw connections.

If you check out the various pages of my website, http://www.geolobo.com/, you will see the balance of art & science that are my interpretive tools. My writing, photography, and trip-leading incorporate all these tools, and my paintings and other illustrations visually reach to a place in the heart that words alone may not penetrate.

Here are a few examples of paintings that suggest some of this kind of connection, but please go to my Interpreting Nature page for much more, and you can see art available for purchase at my Artists for Conservation site. My Artist Statement follows:

Lioness & lichens

Kopje Cat

Mountain Lion, watercolor

Mountain Lion, watercolor

Artist Statement

Evolution is the ultimate designer, and each organism reflects a winnowing creative process. Good design is beautiful, whether the product is as elegant as a gazelle or as comical (to our biased eyes) as a squat toad.

My goal as an artist is to interpret an organism with love, respect, and fidelity to essence. I love the delicacy of watercolor, which, though typically unforgiving as a medium, allows me to depict the softness of feather and the hardness of beak and claw equally well. I am now experimenting with other media, as the artistic process is enriched by media diversity the way a forest or grassland is enhanced through biotic diversity.

We often don’t see nature clearly; we may apply a name and then cease to observe closely, depriving ourselves and our subject of earned intimacy. I want you, the viewer of my paintings, to look more closely, to discover something that would not be apparent if you met an organism in the wild. If we can see clearly, we are blessed with priceless discoveries. Our human world is filled with distractions, many of them not good for our psyche. But marvel at the beauty of an animal well portrayed, and you can for a moment escape the confusion of modern society and connect with something much bigger and grander.

Walt Anderson

Roadrunner Rush

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I moved to Arizona from Eugene, Oregon, also known as Track Town USA.  Road runners were everywhere—streets, sidewalks, and trails.  Funny that the collegiate athletes are called “Ducks.”

Here in Arizona, ducks are limited to rare wetlands in the desert.  Roadrunners, on the other hand, thrive in the deserts and chaparral of the Southwest, and it is always a special treat to encounter this bizarre member of the cuckoo family.

Greater Roadrunner

Greater Roadrunner

I live in Granite Dells, a wonderland of granite outcrops with clearings (“dells”) nestled among the boulders and peaks.  This is roadrunner country.  Continue reading →

Thoughts on J. Henri Fabre

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Plains Lubber, Brachstola magna

Sitting in a burlap blind at the edge of the vast Malheur marsh in SE Oregon, my camera on my lap, I knew I might have hours to wait before some creature appeared within range of my lens.  I was new to wildlife photography, but I was aware that constant vigilance was a price the photographer must assume for success.  Continue reading →

I, Pundit

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The holiday season is upon us, that mathematically odd time of year when ads multiply, good friendships reap dividends, and politics remain as divisive as ever.  My in box and mail box swell with promises of deals so good that if I only spend enough, I can surely become rich.  Buy until you’re spent!  No money down!

The sporting goods catalogs promote insulated jackets so well that the market for down is up.  Which reminds me how our language (and corruptions of it) can bring us cheer well before happy hour.  When I hear someone say, “I am going to lay down,” I immediately visualize that person ovipositing feathers.  If those speakers realized what they were saying, I think they would be willing to lie a lot more readily.

Try to imagine this bird "laying down."

Try to imagine this bird “laying down.”

Our language simply invites word play, and as a man, I manipulate it. Continue reading →

Hope has Wings

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Hope has Wings

A Monarch & a College PresidentMonarch 102814

It’s late October here in Prescott, Arizona, and summer seems to be lingering, maybe loitering, as if it had nothing better to do.  Frost has yet to visit, and the warm afternoons invite shorts and light shirts, somewhat to the delight of the mosquitoes, who have not given up on summer either.

But the birds are not fooled.  Bald Eagles are showing up at the lakes, where the swallows are long gone.  Sparrows and juncos visit the feeders, far from their breeding grounds, while orioles and grosbeaks are likely sipping the avian equivalent of margaritas south of the border. Continue reading →

Monsoon Magic

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For weeks, we have waited, hoping that the early July pattern of monsoon rain arrival would be repeated.  It did not look promising.  June was brutally hot and dry, clouds rare, winds fierce.  The scrub oaks and manzanitas have shed most of their leaves; time will tell if they will all survive this challenge.  Grasses were dry as tinder, nutritionless.  Sprouting daturas withered and died except where we gave them water.  We are the recipients of past pluvial generosity, siphoning water from underground stores without little thought of where that water has come from.  But for now, sharing a little of that water with the other creatures that share our space seems like the right thing to do, since we have taken so much from the wild already.

Water set out for the local birds and mammals was eagerly sought by both.  Our house became the oasis to which dozens of species flocked.  Quail seemed to have had a good reproduction year, as at least a half dozen broods came in daily, but what would have happened without our water subsidy?

Quail brood at water dish

Quail brood at water dish

Rufous –crowned Sparrows, Crissal Thrashers, finches, towhees, and even woodpeckers—they all drank from our little pools in apparent harmony.  Continue reading →

The Hotshots & the Juniper

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June 30, 2014 marks the first-year anniversary of the tragic Yarnell Hill fire that took the lives of 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots.  A day of infamy in US fire history, it has provoked abundant reflection and some action.

Twelve days before the fatal, fateful fire, another blaze, the Doce Fire, started in dense chaparral and shot northward, propelled by powerful winds.  It jumped the highway and sped up over both Little Granite Mountain and Granite Mountain itself, descending with unexpected ferocity down the north slope right up to the edge of homes in Williamson Valley.  It was a terrifying reminder of the power of nature that can overwhelm the puny efforts of humans, even with our advanced technology.  It was humbling.

There were bright spots in that human-nature conflict.  The 20-man Granite Mountain Hotshots team was aware of the ancient alligator juniper that grew in view of both mountains for centuries.  Revered and respected, that tree stood in the line of fire.  But for the intervention of the hotshots, it might today be nothing more than a lifeless, charred trunk, victim of one fire too many.  The crew saved it by creating firebreaks and by using their personal water containers to put out spot fires in its branches.  This was an act of thoughtful heroism; these men put themselves on the fire line simply to save a tree.

Ancient juniper at edge of Doce Burn

Ancient juniper at edge of Doce Burn

But it was, and still is, more than a tree—it is a symbol of resistance, of fortitude, of ancient wisdom.  Continue reading →

Yarnell Revisited

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Nine months after the tragic Yarnell Hill Fire on June 30, 2013, the event continues to touch many of us with a rawness only slightly softened by time.  My memories remain vivid.  With thunderstorm activity developing in the Prescott area that afternoon, I grabbed my camera and headed out to the Doce Fire area south of Granite Mountain.  Fierce little rain squalls gave me subjects to explore visually.  The powdered ash deposits post-fire are very vulnerable to erosion, a step in the ecologic process I wanted to capture.

June 20, 2013 rain on burned chaparral

June 20, 2013 rain on burned chaparral

Then as a squall shifted south, I could see in the distance a column of smoke that caused my hair to rise—it appeared to me that the small town of Yarnell was on fire.  Without hesitation, I leaped into the car and shot toward Skull Valley, having to slow down once in the midst of an intense downpour.  The closer I got to Peeple’s Valley, the more my concern intensified, and I made a decision that gave me a perfect vantage point on a ridge north of the fire.  If I had continued any farther down the highway, I would have been stopped by emergency vehicles and stuck in a line of other cars prohibited from moving farther.

I remember as keenly as if it were still happening how, as I began to photograph the towering cloud of smoke, winds shifted, chilling me briefly with horizontal pellets of rain.  A small herd of horses ran north to below my position.  I continued to watch and document as the fire split into two fiery tongues—one right at Yarnell and another in rugged canyons in the Weavers to the west of the valley.  Planes and helicopters appeared as tiny insects buzzing around the periphery of the towering giant.  I watched until sunset, an eerie yellowish light bathing the entire scene, and I sensed that this would be a moment of tragic history.  Continue reading →