A Brush with Birds: Paintings and stories from the wildby Richard Weatherly
Rating: ★★★★½
isbn: 9781741176445
Publication Date: November 12, 2020
Pages: 282
Genre: Natural Science, Non-fiction
Publisher: Hardie Grant
A Brush with Birds celebrates the exquisite artworks and incredible life of one of the world's finest bird painters, Richard Weatherly.
A skilled falconer and artist, Richard has spent more than fifty years observing birds and their natural habitats around the world, from Antarctica to Zimbabwe to New Guinea, Australia and America. In A Brush with Birds, Richard accompanies his stunning paintings and sketches with fascinating insights, anecdotes and knowledge gathered throughout his career.
Richard's work continues to document and celebrate the natural world, and reminds us of the importance of conserving our unique environment.
A few years ago, MT and I adopted the Icelandic holiday tradition of Jólabókaflóð. We gift each other a book on Christmas eve, then retire to read our gifts and eat chocolate. This year’s gift from MT was A Brush with Birds, which he bought because he thought it was written by an artist about how to draw and sketch birds.
He was half right; it’s written by a well-known wildlife artist. But Weatherly is also something of a naturalist; when his art led him into the field, he worked with scientists and conservationists to a degree that his CV, I imagine, would be equally weighted by his artistic and scientific accomplishments.
The result turned out to be so much better than a how-to book about drawing birds. This, instead, is a memoir of a kind, lightly touching on Weatherly’s journey from his family ranch (station) in Australia and his first personal encounter with a bird, to his higher education in England and his first forays into creating his own art, back to Australia and the homestead, and then on various adventures through Africa, North America, and Antartica. Generously laced throughout the pages are his sketches, watercolours, and full oil paintings, done throughout the years, chronicling his journeys.
The narrative appears to be his own voice; it’s very much the printed equivalent to sitting on someone’s porch and hearing them tell their stories. This mostly works, but I did ding my rating 1/2 star, because while that authentic voice made the narrative a warmer, more relatable one, the lack of editorial polish also made it harder to understand in spots.
A genuinely beautiful art book that is also an enjoyable read; it looks good and is good.