Artist's Notes
(Wildlife Paintings, Oil on Canvas Bird Painting, Florida Woodstork )
This oil painting's focus is Florida's wood stork, an Everglades icon under threat. The wood stork, as familiar to the great wetland vistas of South Florida as any other animal, has again been thrust into the spotlight. The USFWS announced (September 2010) that downlisting to Threatened may be warranted, and the agency will spend the next year conducting a “status review” evaluating the bird’s recovery.
In the 1930’s, the wood stork population in the United States was approximately sixty thousand. Today, the National Audubon Society estimates that there are only four thousand to five thousand six hundred nesting pairs. Conditions such as hydrological changes, ecological shifts,
geological transformations, and atmospheric modifications have played a significant role in the rapid decline of the wood stork. Worldwide, there are 17 species of storks but only the wood stork is regularly found in the United States.
From an oil painting artist's prespective, the Wood Stork is a challenging subject. "En plein air" is a French expression which means "in the open air", and is particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors. To paint the wood stork in natural light and in its environment means going where they reside.
Finding the Wood Stork in South Florida is a challenge. By 1995, fewer than 500 pairs of Wood Storks were nesting in the Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve area of South Florida. If recent trends continue, Wood Storks may no longer be able to survive in south Florida.
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art. Alexander Pope