Last year I hatched a plan and started creating a body of work including wildlife art, interviews, and articles. While I’ve been a working artist for many years now, I definitely stepped out of my comfort zone by interviewing and writing about scientists and others who work around wildlife. Jennie Lay, journalist extraordinaire, helped coach me through this process. I discovered that I felt awkward and lost plenty of the time, but I also remembered how much I love writing, and love creating artwork with a purpose.
After interviewing Kevin Dietrich, Steamboat Springs, Colorado wildlife photographer, I began carving a linocut based on his experience tracking young mountain lions through the snow. Kevin gave me a photo for reference with a lion standing in deep snow and looking back before heading into a grove of aspen trees. I knew I would make this image as a large black and white print to go with the series of other animals I’ve done. But the challenge was, how to make a very white and snowy scene using black ink.
I had fun making stylized snowflakes, and tried to carve them so that the lines of the snowflakes were white instead of black. And I carved away most of the linoleum to let the white paper show through.
I was very happy that Steamboat Magazine was interested in publishing a bit of the article I wrote based on the interview with Kevin. You can read that here. The whole piece I wrote was a combination of Kevin’s background and experiences combined with information about mountain lions. My goal in writing has been to combine personal experiences of people who spend time around wildlife, with information and issues faced by the animals. So, following this post I will share the whole article with photos by Kevin Dietrich. To see the article including the lovely book design by Paulina M. Johnson, click here.