Red Alert -Red Tailed Hawk

In art school, teachers usually try to mold their students to be “real” artists. This means painting human models or still lifes, or even landscapes, all quite traditional. Most of those teachers have never even seen a hawk’s eye. If the student (in this case, me) is obsessed by nature, instinctively he feels that the range of nature subjects is much wider than the traditional ones, and far more interesting. Natural history tells a fascinating story millions of years old, long before human beings existed. I am conscious that I am a privileged person to be able to paint subjects like this red-tailed hawk, the more beautiful cousin of our European Buteo buteo. It was interesting to leave the red tail out of the image, so it might as well be the European species of buteo because the tail makes the only difference between the two species. My place in France is packed with hawks. Every day I can admire their beautiful silhouettes in the sky and hear them calling. Then I always think: “How nice it would be if they also had the red tail.” So, I must admit that American birdlife is far more beautiful than the European, and it is a delight to paint it. With the years it became part of my style to paint close-ups. Since in the wild one can never come close enough to the animals to enjoy their wonderful textures, I like to paint those close-ups and feel that I paint the impossible.