Interview with artist Carel Pieter Brest van Kempen:

1. Which comes first, the research or the subject?

I'm constantly researching, whether it's making observations first hand in the field or reading. Unlike most wildlife artists, who try to recreate things they have seen, I usually try to create something I've never seen, but that represents a plausible situation. Whether it's a point of view that would otherwise be impossible to see, or an interesting situation, most of my inventions come from my own imagination, rather than being based directly on experience. This usually mandates a good deal of library research to help me put the whole composition together. Some paintings, like “Prairie Sentinel,” depict a particular idea. I read a great deal about rattlesnake taxonomy, and spoke with several experts while working on that piece. While some snake taxonomists theorize that the first rattlesnakes found an advantage in being able to warn bison away from them, others repudiate this notion, and claim that the first rattlesnakes appeared southeast of the bison's range. Some of my paintings are simple portraits, and require much less research.

2. Do you spend a lot of time observing your subjects, and their environment, before you begin to paint?

Once I select a species to paint, I often seek individuals out to observe, whether in the wild or in zoos. As I worked on “Crash-barrier Waltzer,” I couldn't help but pay closer attention to the magpies in my yard. I have never seen a Mountain Witch in the wild, but sat before an aviary bird as I painted my portrait of that species. Of course, for creatures like the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, I have to be satisfied with limited access.

3. What medium do you prefer to work with and why?

I work in acrylic, oil, watercolor and ink wash. All four media have their advantages and disadvantages, but I'm definitely more confident with acrylic. My typical style strives for a rich, textural and realistic look that I can come closest to with acrylic. I use oil paints when I want to paint more loosely. I was introduced to the idea of ink wash in the 70s, when I saw a Louis Agassiz Fuertes exhibition that included several of them. Each year since then I've painted a piece or two in that medium.

4. How do you decide which animals to include as secondary subjects in your paintings?

Incidental plant species usually act as compositional elements in my paintings, so most of them are decided on in the early stages of designing a piece. Color and shape are important considerations, as well as the natural habits of the plant species selected. The secondary creatures are usually the last considerations, and I usually select a spot to put an incidental animal first, then select a good species to inhabit it.

5. Your work is very meticulous and detailed. Do you rely primarily on memory, sketches, or photographs taken in the field?

I rely on everything I can get. I rely heavily on all of those things as well as study skins, live models, and published photographs and drawings by other people as well, to inform me on the structure, color, etc. of an element. I work on a 4' x 8' drafting table, that is typically cluttered with books, many of my own drawings and photographs, sticks, rocks, study skins...it's a mess! Once I finish a painting, I put all the stuff away, clean the desk, and start a new collection for the next piece.

6. What are some habitats and animals that you look forward to exploring and recording in the future?

There are so many! Island ecology is particularly fascinating, and I think the most interesting places of all are tropical islands with a large landmass and high mountains, where you have a real diversity of habitat. Three such islands exist on Earth (I'm not including Australia): Madagascar, Borneo and New Guinea. So far, I've only been to the first, so the second two are at the top of my priority list.

7. What were some of the formative influences in your development as an artist?

I grew up in a situation where I could walk out my door in any direction save one, and hike for 50 miles without running into human development. This ideal situation had a lot to do with my fascination for nature. I'm a self-taught artist, who was very influenced by Audubon, Fuertes and, especially, Salvador Dali. I took an excellent drawing class in high school, which taught me a lot (thanks, Mr. Stewart!). When I first saw Carl Brenders' work, in the late 80's, I was awakened to the possibilities of painting exceptionally detailed work that was rich and very realistic. When I first met Carl, in 1993, he was very generous, and gave me lots of very helpful technical advice, as had John Seerey-Lester a couple of years earlier.

8. Why do you paint wildlife rather than some other subject?

I'm more fascinated with it than with anything else. I occasionally paint other things, a cityscape, human figures, etc., but in such cases it's hard for me to resist sticking a little bird or something in there. In my teens and early twenties, I painted in a surrealistic manner extremely derivative of Dali, but even then, nature provided my themes and symbols.

9. How do you decide what to paint? What to leave out? Are there any wildlife subjects that you avoid?

I paint what inspires me. I'm constantly doing little thumbnail sketches of ideas, and thinking about others. Most concepts spend their infancy in my skull, then graduate to the thumbnail stage. By the time they're ready to commit to illustration board, they're usually at least three years old. Once I finish a painting, one of my many juvenile concepts will be screaming louder for maturity then the others, and will self-select itself as the next piece.

Regarding what to leave out...uh...I'm not so good at that. Minimalism isn't one of my strengths, although it's something I occasionally shoot for, and nothing requires greater discipline from me.

As I've become more aware of the wildlife art that's being painted around me, I'm really struck by its homogeneity. If, as wildlife artists, we're trying to describe the character of the natural world, the genre as a whole does a poor job of representing one of its chief hallmarks: its diversity. For this reason, I avoid painting subjects such as Gray Wolves, Bald Eagles, American Elk, etc., which are fine creatures, but have been painted to death.

10. How do you know when your painting “works,” is complete or successful?

Very good question. All three are difficult, and, of course, subjective. Once I'm finished with a piece, my eyes are so polluted with preconceptions, that I cannot see my own work. It's very helpful to look at a painting in a mirror, to see problems that were invisible before. Very often a painting I don't particularly care for will be very popular with the public at large, and vice versa.

11. What would be your advice to an aspiring artist?

Some of the best advice I could give would be not to fear failure. If your goal is to create pieces of artwork that reach a certain minimum standard, then it would be folly to throw everything you have into an ambitious painting that might take you six months to paint, and might very well fail as good art. If, on the other hand, your goal is to become a great artist in your lifetime, then you have no choice but to act in such a manner. Only by repeated failure...collossal failure...will you achieve that goal.