Birds have been the primary focus of my art for 33 years. Fore-shadowed by childhood drawings of wildlife, my artist’s perspective is now built upon knowledge of avian biology, behavior, and ecology. My artistic expressions of the natural world have been enhanced by a 34-year relationship with my ornithologist husband Dr. John L. Confer and by unique opportunities to sketch from life at Cornell’s former captive breeding program for peregrine falcons, at restoration sites for historically depleted seabird colonies off the coasts of Maine and Newfoundland, and by observing thousands of migrating tundra birds on Hudson Bay Lowlands. I am committed to the belief that the best wildlife art merges accuracy with an effort to capture the spirit of a wild and sentient creature. I attempt to combine the relationships between form and space with composition and design without masking my emotional responses to living beings. I attempt to evoke my belief that Science cannot thrive without Art and Art cannot exist without Science – each discipline being strengthened by the other. Both seek truth and require observational skills that see the essence of a thing, not a preconceived idea of it.

For one year I will photograph, sketch, and paint the largest, most endangered avian wonder to roam the continent. In spite of its unique splendor, European settlers and modern man began in the 1790’s to persistently shoot and poison Gymnogyps californianus and raid its nests for egg collections. By 1992, humans managed in less than 200 years, to wipe out all but 22 California Condors - 21 in the wild and one in captivity at the Los Angeles Zoo. After 16 years of successes and heartbreaks of a daring captive breeding and release program, there are over 200 free-flying California Condors, including 3 new wild-hatched offspring, fledged in 2007 in the Grand Canyon and at Vermillion Cliffs.

I embark on this privileged assignment remembering my late mentor, Don Richard Eckelberry, Master Wildlife Artist. Memories of 25 years of candid Eckelberry critique and gleeful encouragement to break the rules of conventional Art continue to guide me in and out of my studio. A master of sketching birds in the wild, Eckelberry believed that the impact of a well-made composition depended as much on what was left out as it did on what was put in, that sketches from life opened our eyes more fully than any photograph, and that one should paint feeling with strong artistic and scientific underpinnings.