The winter exhibition at the Wildling Art Museum featured the wildlife art of Salt Lake City based artist, Carel Pieter Brest van Kempen. This painter of Dutch descent explores the rich diversity of the natural world from exceptionally unique perspectives. The artist’s self-stated goal is to say as much as he can about how organisms live and interact with other organisms and their environments. He has traveled all over the world, studying both threatened and endangered species and their ecosystems in detail. Most of his paintings depict several species of flora and fauna, including hidden insects, and thus Brest van Kempen demonstrates the interdependence of all life.

Largely self-taught, Brest van Kempen has studied nature since he was a child, exploring the untracked back country along the Wasatch Range of the Rocky Mountains, drawing and collecting, practicing falconry, and breeding lizards. He studied biology at the university of Utah and admired the work of Audubon, Fuertes and especially Salvador Dali. One can feel the latter’s influence in the hyper realism and uniform focus of Brest van Kempen’s paintings.

The artist has exhibited his works throughout the world and earned numerous awards. He is a member of the prestigious Society of Animal Artists which has awarded him Awards of Excellence on multiple occasions. Public collections containing his paintings include the Springville Art Museum in Utah, the Woodson Art Museum, the World Center for Birds of Prey, and Vermont’s Bennington Center for the Arts. A 300 page monograph about the artist, Rigor Vitae: Life Unyielding, is being published by Eagle Mountain Publishing.

“Biodiversity in the Art of Carel Pieter Brest van Kempen,” was curated and circulated by Dr. David J. Wagner, an historian of American wildlife art. The exhibition, which was open to the public from January 18 through April 2, 2006, included approximately 25 original paintings and preparatory drawings, produced from the artist’s travels in the Americas.

The artist was present on February 12, 3-5 p.m. to speak about his life’s work, demonstrate his techniques, and sign copies of his new book.