Shop Talk: Ornithological Love

sketch for Blackbird painting

Is there something you've ever wondered about Dolan's work? Are you interested to know more about a particular piece? Submit your questions to us via e-mail. Questions will be selected from time to time for our new Shop Talk blog section. We'll also be featuring a question in each of our monthly e-newsletters. Please send a 2-3 sentence bio about yourself if you'd like it included with your question.

Our first question is something that we've been asked repeatedly at art fairs this summer.

Question:
What's with all the birds in your work?

Answer:
When I was a wee lad of, let's say eight or ten years, I used to take walks around the woods and creeks. I had some USDA Forest Service-issued binoculars and a Peterson field guide that had little tabs, like a cookbook, for each species of birds. I also carried a sketchbook with me. Let's face it...I was a nerd. A bird nerd. Ha ha. Hmmm. I would have these contests with myself to see how many birds I could locate and identify. It's one thing to hear a bird in the woods, but another thing altogether to actually be able to see it. So anyway, I kept this sketchbook of birds and, as the popular naturalist’s story goes, would spend hours in the woods waiting, listening, sketching, etc. I never really knew there was a job where people did this for a living (apologies to ornithologists). So I just continued to draw pictures of these things and tried to remember what they sounded like. I also perfected a goldfinch whistle-chirp bird call. I’m not much of a whistler. I haven’t been able to do that two-fingered whistle, ever, but I can do a whole bunch of bird calls. But the question remains: why birds? Well, for one, when I was young birds were an integral part of my daily activities, even when I wasn’t searching them out. I would wake up to the caffeinated song of the mockingbird and go to sleep with the macabre, rock-a-bye sounds of the whippoorwill. As a creative person, no subject matter is more intriguing than the creatures of the natural world, and the birds rank among the most interesting for me. The colors and textures are always an inspiration, and there's always something new to see in their actions. And besides, since each bird has its own personality, I can set a different stage each time I incorporate a new bird into my work.

For avid readers, here's a bird-related book I would recommend:
*Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of the Birds of America

Image c/o Dolan Geiman