This summer I’ve been spending time working on color studies. In my jewelry I work a lot with black and white, but for my original art, my larger pieces, I wanted to explore color.
In exploring color, I wanted to introduce unexpected and bright colors to the animals. I wanted the colors to make the animals a little abstract and not true to life, but brilliant.
Humpback whales are prevalent in California during migration season. For the last two years, you can see the whales easily from the coast; one day in Half Moon Bay, we were standing on the beach and we could see a pod of whales surfacing just past the waves. I’m not sure why they are so close to the coast line, but it amazes me that these huge and gentle creatures and swimming just hundreds of yards from where I’m standing.
Humback 1 is available for preorder as an 18 x 24 or 8 x 10 print.
Sharks are one of the most misunderstood animals; great whites are one of the most feared animals, and current conservation status is Vulnerable. There is a lot we don’t know about sharks, because it’s difficult to observe them and they are difficult to keep in captivity. Great white sharks don’t feed and often die in captivity; the Monterey Bay aquarium has had some success getting them to feed, but has not kept them for a long period of time. Sharks are caught just for the fins (in a practice where the fin is cut off and the shark tossed back to die, which is one of the most cruel practices I can imagine) or get tangled in fishing nets as a result of by catch. Great white sharks are the top of the ocean food chain, and are important to keeping oceans healthy.
Andrea Vickery 