Gifts

It always amazes me just how many artists are truly gifted and are so shy about their work, most are not salesman, myself included.

When you meet a gifted person we should all try to draw them out away from their fears and timidity, most won't even look you in the eye I have found because they are so sure they are going to be rejected emotionally or artistically.

What I enjoy though is picking at their surface and asking questions about their art and usually they begin to open up and explain the process and you see a spark. That spark allows you to see their true passion, it is not the person then that you are looking at and questioning it is their passion and they can talk about it til the cows come home.

I have learned a lot about myself in these conversations, how not to be and how to really share the passion that is art. That is who we really are and people need to see that. We see life as unique, shapes, colors, textures and desire so badly to share that with everyone but often fail to necessarily vocalize it well.

I feel too that patrons need to feel that passion also and feel our need to convey that emotion in clay, paint, pen or whatever medium we use to express that emotion. So I have come to the conclusion that next time I feel shy or run into someone that does wonderful work I will remember just how unique artist are and be proud.

Piercing the Silence

Piercing the Silence



 Piercing the Silence was done out of my respect for the most important animal in my life. Elk have been a reason to get out of bed at 3:30 in the morning and drive the hour and a half to witness one of the most exciting moments in nature. Granted there are a lot of moments but this one actually sends chills down my spine just hearing an elk bugle and stalk around in his majesty.

You arrive in the dark at your chosen spot and pull over and park, you naturally have your coffee or in my case hot chocolate ready to await the dawn of that particular day. It is a magical moment and you are actually afraid to make noise for fear that it will break the spell.

Then you hear it, that awesome shrill and whistle or scream whichever way you want to describe it, even in the dark it is incredible.  As it slowly dawns and you are able to pick out shapes and distinguish between bushes and the elk themselves you see the herd of an incredible bull.

Often they may capture up to 20 or so cows to be their harem.  These magnificent bulls, often 6 x 6 or 6 x 7 which is counting the antlers on either side, are overseeing their herd and completely blind to anything other than a challenging bull or escaping cow.  I have been able to get many great photo's and store many emotional moments peeking into the dawn, awakening my senses in an intense way. Sometimes you are laying on the ground shaking you are so cold that you are sure that your camera is not going to focus but then you realize you are not cold but excited. I have hundreds of photo's but would not throw away one because they mean so much to me as not only memories but research material.

In this incredible moment all humans are trying to be respectful and stay within the limits of approach of these truly wonderful animals. Some cows have calves still at their sides even though they are ready for breeding again, my favorite picture is witnessing a cow nursing her calf among the confusion.

The bugling is most intense in these early morning hours but it continues until around 9:00 a.m. when they all begin to move either into the trees or up into the valley.  Some bulls may not have but five or so cows but as you look to the more experienced bulls and larger bulls you will find a considerable difference. To witness a fight over the cows is fantastic, most large bulls will not even put up with the challenge of a much smaller bull and just chase it away but a perfect match of horns may spar for quite a while and it is serious business. Often an older bull will find it does not have the stamina and back off after becoming injured, these will be the ones to either die slowly from their injuries or have a tough time once winter sets in again.

In Piercing the Silence I have tried to capture such a bull, proud, stately and in constant movement trying to keep his cows from escaping or other bulls from stealing one away. It is this time that I often wish I was a painter so that I could catch DAWN. The mist and fog that hangs over the mountains and trees and lifts from the valley floor as it warms is part of the fascination of my early adventure.

Book work

One thing I can not do without is the collection of books I have acquired over the years to help in the research of animals.  I don't care how many pictures you take or sketches you draw, when it comes down to the final clay you want to have a reference that is laying right in front of you and is anatomically correct.

My favorite two books to constantly dog ear or turn to are Animals in Motion by Eadweard Muybridge and The Atlas of Animal Anatomy by Ellenberger and Baum. Animals in Motion take you through high speed shots of 34 different animals, action pictures frozen in time that really give you the ability to see muscles in action.

The Atlas of Animal Anatomy is interesting because it breaks up the animal anatomy to where you can see the development of the animal from bone to hide. That gives you the advantage over someone that does not even look at the influence of bone and muscle under the skin of an active animal. The only way to really do an animal correct is to understand the anatomy and then you have to understand the animals personality and traits. Posture is impossible without structure.

I also haunt the library sales where often I can find old books with either information that I need or pictures that give me further incite. You not only use as much out in the field observing that you can but you also find as many other sources to aid you as possible.

Two subscriptions that I adore are Ducks Unlimited and North American Hunter, I know they are meant for hunters which I am not but the information gleaned from them is immense. Even though I learned  about ducks picking up dead ones for the Division of Wildlife from a botulism die off I still caught myself referring to photos in Ducks Unlimited.

Hopefully as a patron you will appreciate the trouble most artist go to in order to develop the skill needed to capture a moment in the life of a beautiful animal. I never even knew elk could jump gracefully from a standing position until I witnessed it myself...little things bit by bit collected become a work of art.

Elusive Legend

I don't know how many people will be offended to know that a lot of my information comes from seeing dead species. How else would you be able to measure a wild animal unless you are fortunate enough to have them to view daily. I will also admit that I am from a hunting family, yes I know I am going to get flack from that but  animals have to be managed some how and licensed hunting is a game management effort to keep  their numbers under control. We only have so much open space and so much to graze on and any over population will just lead to wildlife dieing in tremendous numbers.

Whitetail are a typical example of a wild animal that multiplies at a tremendous rate and has adapted to civilization in such a way as to endanger themselves and drivers by running across highways that in previous times was a natural trail for their migration.

Elusive Legend was an interesting study of not only one of my favorite animals but one of the most graceful animals in the United States. They are able to stand on a fence line and gracefully glide over that fence as though it was nothing. Some animals go through a fence (pronghorn to name one) but a whitetail was born to fly and fly they do.

This piece also depicts one of my favorite sites to see and that is the old cross timber fences, so often people run barbed wire on areas that intend to mark their property and end up snagging a deer and having them become entangled and dieing a slow death of starvation where they struggle and become more and more entangled.



Elusive Legend

 This piece was fun to do because I got to play a little with the type of horns I wanted to see, it was done on a wire armature with Chavant clay and done separate from the fence so I actually never had the two together until they were welded after casting. A hunting friend of mine informed me after I had intended to have my deer flipping his tail that a deer only flipped that beautiful white flag of a tail  when alerted to danger or running away from danger....can't we pretend?

So hopefully all hunters are ethical and truly hunt for the right reason and hopefully they will not be judged by non hunters just because they love animals.....hunters pay with their license's to help manage the deer population because they love whitetails also and most eat the meat to feed their families.

 This is a view of the metal before the patina is done and just after welding, the most important thing I learned from this piece is that you can eliminate the welding scars so to speak and keep it cleaner by leaving the wax of the log that is touching the deers stomach area attached to the wax deer when it goes to the foundry therefore they are cast together not welded together. Then all you have to do is weld the log onto the fence area.
This was also a good study in animal muscle since in the position I placed my deer certain muscles are long and strung out and others were gathered.

On this animal in particular my set up of having mirrors in the corner of my studio to place the animal  gave me the opportunity to check out the proportionate muscle action on both sides at the same time. If you don't have this you are constantly turning the animal and checking it but you can loose the error in turning.

The eye is a fickle partner in art, you see what you want to see...that is where it is good to always cover up art for a period of time and when you go back you are looking at it with a fresh pair of eyes.

Re-thinking Ideas

Recently I have been talking to other artist that have been re-inventing themselves and trying to create according to the current markets. Sometimes if you can think of a project that still stays true to your beliefs and along the same genre that you feel comfortable with this is good, it is thinking outside the box. What I hear a little though is doubt...DOUBT, and that is sad. I know that all artist find a bad economy a challenge but it should not pick at your creative side and chastise it to the point that your internal voice tells you to give it up and try something just to make money. What it should do is open a door you have not peered into yet and let you see some opportunity that you could not fancy

When people are not investing in art they are often either buying personal gifts for a special person or even corporations are looking into utilizing the 1% For Art Program that quite often builds up in some locations and is threatened by the need in other areas therefore the tendency of a city to steal from that fund.  A bad economy just means that you need to research deeper and into those dark corners that you might not have ever considered before.

Quite often when I am stuck I go down and work in the studio for at least two hours even if it is just pinching up clay and warming it or cleaning off work space...what I find is that the environment that allows me to get my juices going again will kick in and get me excited again.

2011

Hopefully if you are a patron, you are gearing up for the New Year and thinking just what types of galleries you will be enjoying this year on trips to wherever and just what type of art you are looking for to add to your collection. Often people collect in the same genre and other times they collect randomly according to their passions and "just happen to see". However you dedicate yourself to the arts, we as artist appreciate the fact that you are helping us to complete a dream and to continue creating. So whether you search for bronzes, watercolors, pastels or pencil please keep supporting the artist and their endeavor to put an emotion into a visual just for patrons such as you.

If you are an artist, this will be your year to tackle that project you have been putting off, this will be your year to branch out into another medium, this will be your year to smile inside yourself knowing that you are creating. If you have been in a funk because of the economy, this will be the year to pick yourself back up and know that good art is always desired and strive to become the best of whatever medium it is you choose to create in and thrive. If you just plain need a kick in the butt, let me know and I will send you some words of encouragement, it is good for artist to support artist, who else understand our emotional state better than ourselves.



Elusive Legend




Tranquil Moment




Wiley Coyote

 For myself, I am currently working on a  stone piece and a commission of a beloved pet  for a woman  so she will always have her pet in bronze as a memory. I am first obligated to begin with a clean studio and to get it organized for this new years projects.  I am also finishing up a project I had already started in 2010 of a horse and it is near completion.  Happy New Year to Everyone and here are a few pictures of coming up work that I will be posting on....if anyone ever wants to view more of my work, just log onto fineartamerica.com and pull up my name Peggy Campbell.

Visions with downsides

Not very often do you run into someone that is working on the very same idea you are and you catch it in time to change your creation...often it is not caught until you exhibit in the same show and by then there is nothing that you can do about it. Also some animal posture is so common that you will run into the same positioning of an animal quite often.

I remember I had a favorite piece that was in miniature that I had had great luck with and I had decided to point it up or enlarge it so that it could be used in an outside area. That same week I happened to be at the foundry and looked over and there it was exactly same position and done by someone a lot more popular than me in the outside enlarged work, so there you go....a burned idea!

When it is maddening is when you hear from someone that someone has created a piece that is exactly like yours and your piece was so off the wall and far fetched that you wonder how in the world someone could have possibly had that exact idea in the exact same position of something that was not a common creature to do in the first place. Go figure!

This is a good place to put in the idea that if you are online in any site at all, you take the chance of someone copying your work, whether it be in Loveland, Colorado or China. Hopefully you will just have to keep your following of patrons and run faster (or keep beating the side of your truck and keeping the chickens in the air, thanks Jack).