Mammal & Other Animals (non Bird) Art

By Janet Tarjan Erl

I’ve spent most of my adult life living in rural settings so that I could walk right out my backdoor and explore the back country.  I’m an avid explorer, and I explore everyday except when I’m sick or injured.  That’s a lot of exploring, and I’ve been doing it since I was twelve years old. 

Between hiking, biking, skiing, and kayaking I know I’ve covered well over 100, 000 miles of human powered travel, and most of it has been in rural or back country places.  That means I see a lot of wildlife in a variety of situations and places.  Sometimes I just get fleeting glimpses.  Other times, if I remain concealed, I can watch wildlife for long stretches.  I also have had the good fortune of living in very rural settings where the wildlife lived comfortably on my property enabling me to observe their natural behaviors.  I’ve been amazed to learn that wildlife don’t always behave as we think they will.

I frequently photograph wildlife, and these photos are the resources I paint from.  If you ever wondered how I could paint animals in such detail, it’s because I have photos to see all those intricate details.  I rarely photograph an animal in the setting it is painted in, so I take a lot of artistic license by merging the wildlife and settings together so that the paintings seem believable.  Often times this means changing the lighting or posture on an animal. 

Though I photograph a lot of wildlife in nature, I also gladly photograph captive wildlife especially, cougars and wolves, since they are so elusive.

Many wildlife artists paint highly romanticized images of wildlife based solely on what their customers want, and I respect their interpretations of wildlife, but I usually like to represent the wildlife as I have seen them or expect that I would see them if I encountered them on one of my forays into the back country.        

Though, I admit, I did my fair share of on - demand paintings for eager galleries that wanted me to paint what they knew was easy to sell, I more often painted what I wanted to paint even if I knew it might not sell.  My independence came with a very high price, though.  It led to rejection, a sense of failure, and ultimately it led to my getting cancer, but in the end, that price for independence gave me the freedom to be happy and content with what I am.

So, I hope you enjoy the wildlife art and realize that my heart is as independent and wild as the wild beasts of nature I like to paint.