J A M E S P R O S E K

FIELD GUIDE: James Prosek’s Un/Natural World

An exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Art

Myth of Order V, 2015, birch branches, clay, acrylic paint, 15x 15 x 6 inches Private Collection, Pennsylvania

March 7 - August 2, 2015

Often described as a contemporary Audubon, James Prosek (American, born 1975, lives and works in Easton, Connecticut) interprets and depicts the natural world through the lens of his personal experiences.

Self-taught artist, natural historian, writer, world traveler, and adventurer, Prosek has observed wildlife in a diverse variety of habitats, including Turkey, Micronesia, Zimbabwe, the Bahamas, the Eastern Seaboard, and the American West.

His paintings, drawings, and sculptures explore the human need to classify and categorize nature as a way to understand it. At once startlingly realistic and skillfully manipulated, his meticulous renderings of birds, fish, and mammals move beyond illustration into artistically interpreted portraits that capture the essence and per-sonalities of his subjects and often provide provocative commentary on current environmental issues.

A Visit to James Prosek’s Studio

Walking into James Prosek’s studio is like visiting the research office of a world explorer (which, in fact, he is). It’s filled with stacks and stacks of art and travel books and scientific journals, and everywhere you turn there are sketches, models, paintings in progress, and handwritten notes for future books and articles. Interspersed with all of this are his art materials: the expected pencils, ink, watercolors, paint, paper, and canvas—and the unexpected antlers, bones, shells, drill bits, clay flowers, moss, and taxidermied birds and animals.

An amazing self-taught polymath, Prosek has learned to do taxidermy, often using roadkills that his friends bring him and that he keeps in a freezer in his garage. During my recent visit, he showed me his process for making “Eel Impressions,” large abstract works on paper. He ran and got an eel out of his freezer, thawed it under hot water, painted it with watercolor paint, and pressed it repeatedly onto a sheet of paper on the floor. Then he washed the eel and put it back in the freezer to wait for the next work.

Prosek’s paintings are not straightforward documentation or illustration. Instead they are an amalgam of his memories, experiences, and imagination, incorporating elements from his own sketches and photographs along with references to works by other artists who depict the natural world, such as Albrecht Dürer, Martin Johnson Heade, Thomas Moran, and George Catlin. His recent portrait of a bison was inspired by a painting by Albert Bierstadt, Buffalo Head (1879), that he saw at the Whitney Western Art Museum in Cody, Wyoming, while on his way to see the real bison in Yellowstone.

Prosek says art and science are both about observation of the world around us, and that creating art is a way to help you really see something and also remember it. He views the scientific system of classification as our way of trying to make sense of the natural world.

Naming a thing is a way to try to control it—whereas he sees nature as constantly morphing and changing, eluding naming, classification, order, and control, and he tries to present that sense of fluidity in his art. In his words: “Naming is a necessary act in communicating about the natural world, and an essential part of being human, but it also has great limitations in expressing the real nature of reality—which Darwin exposed to us with his accounts of the ever-evolving origins of species. Ours is a fluid, continuous, chaotic, and ever-changing world.”

Linda Johnson Dougherty Chief Curator & Curator of Contemporary ArtNorth Carolina Museum of Art

Red Wolf in Coastal Plain, 2015 Hand-painted acrylic on sheetrock 142 x 71 1/2 inches

Appalachian Mountain Forest, 2015 Hand-painted acrylic on sheetrock 141 x 73 1/4 inches

Cypress Swamp, North Carolina, 2015Hand-painted acrylic on sheetrock

142 x 304 3/4 inches

Wood Duck, 2015, oil and acrylic on wood panel, 32 inches (diameter) Carolina Parakeets, 2015, oil and acrylic on wood panel, 28 inches (diameter)

Myth of Order II, 2014, watercolor, gouache, colored pencil, and graphite on tea stained paper, 19 1/4 x 22 inchesPrivate Collection, Pennsylvania

Myth of Order I, 2014, watercolor, gouache, colored pencil, and graphite on tea stained paper, 18 1/4 x 22 1/2 inches

Myth of Order IV, 2014, birch branches, clay, acrylic paint, 14 x18 x 3 inches

Metamorphosis V, 2014, antler, clay, acrylic paint, black walnut wood, 23 x 18 1/2 x 12 inches Metamorphosis IV, 2014, antler, clay, acrylic paint, ebony wood, 22 x 12 x 11 inches

American Bison, Yellowstone, 2014, watercolor, gouache, colored pencil, and graphite on tea stained paper, 24 1/4 x 28 1/2 inchesBuffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming

Southern White Rhinoceros, 2015, watercolor, gouache, colored pencil, and graphite on tea stained paper, 24 1/4 x 28 1/2 inchesPrivate Collection, Connecticut

Sawfish, 2015Watercolor, gouache,

colored pencil, and graphite on tea stained paper 42 1/4 x 100 inches

American Bison, 2014, oil, acrylic, and mixed media on panel, 45 x 56 inches

Atlantic Cod, 2015, oil, acrylic, and mixed media on panel, 45 x 56 inches

Southern White Rhinoceros, 2015, oil, acrylic, and mixed media on panel, 45 x 56 inchesNational Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson, Wyoming

Zebra (Zimbabwe), 2014, oil, acrylic, and mixed media on panel, 45 x 56 inches Private Collection, Connecticut

Avian Composition No. 1 , 2015, oil and acrylic on panel, 45 x 45 inchesSmithsonnian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Eel Impressions, 2014, watercolor on paper, 28 3/4 x 36 1/4 inchesEel Impressions IV, 2014, watercolor on paper, 31 x 37 inches

Dogwood with Warblers, Nocturne, 2014, watercolor, gouache, colored pencil, and graphite on tea stained paper, 19 x 28 1/2 inchesPrivate Collection, New York

Magnolia with Warblers, Nocturne, 2014, watercolor, gouache, colored pencil, and graphite on tea stained paper, 19 x 28 1/2 inchesPrivate Collection, New York

Abstract Fish V, 2016, bronze, 84 x 50 x 18 inches North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Installation view, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh 2015

Selected Exhibitions Selected Public Collections

Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA

Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA

Art in Embassies/US Department of State, Abuja, Nigeria

Art in Embassies/US Department of State, Kabul, Afghanistan

Bellarmine Museum of Art, Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT

Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming

Cornell University Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY

Evansville Museum of Arts and Science, Evansville, IN

Hammond Museum of Japanese Art, North Salem, NY

Henry l. Ferguson Museum, Fishers Island, NY

Lafayette College Art Collection, Easton, PA

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX

National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.

The National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson, Wyoming

New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT

North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.

Union College Art Collection, Schenectady, NY

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond

Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT

Yale Beinecke Library, New Haven, CT

2015

James Prosek: Ocean FishesVero Beach Museum of Art, FL

Field Guide: James Prosek’sUn/Natural WorldNorth Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

2014

The Singing and the Silence: Birds in Contemporary ArtSmithsonian American Art Museum, D.C.

James Prosek: Wall of SilhouettesCornell Lab of OrnithologyCornell University

James Prosek: Wondrous StrangeNew Britain Museum of American Art, CT

The Peacock and the Cobra: James Prosek among the Arts of South AsiaPhiladelphia Museum of Art, PA

2013

James Prosek: The Spaces in BetweenAddison Gallery of American Art, MA

Tandem Pursuits: Armor & IchthyologyGlyndor Gallery, Wave Hill Public Garden & Cultural Center, NY

James Prosek: Ocean Fishes, Birds and CuriositiesNational Arts Club, NY

Domestic, Wild, Divine:Arstists Look at AnimalsVirginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond

2012

Ocean Fishes and TaxonomyNational Academy of Sciences, Philadelphia, PA

James Prosek: Un-Natural HistoryBellarmine Museum of Art, Fairfield Univer-sity

James Prosek: SurinameGallery at the Whitney, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University , CT

Oceanomania: Souvenirs from Mysterious SeasThe National Museum, Monaco

2010

Strange TravelersTanya Bonakdar Gallery, NY

Mildred’s Lane/Renovating WaldenTufts University Art Gallery, MA

2009

Real & ImaginedReynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA

2007

Life & Death: A Visual TaxonomyAldrich Contemporary Art Museum, CT

2005

Symmetry & MythFleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

2004

Monuments to NatureWestport Arts Center, CT

2003

The Desire of MemoryD.U.M.B.O. Arts Center, Brooklyn NY

Residencies

Vermont Studio CenterYale University School of Art: Norfolk, CTEdward E. Elson Artist-in-Residence, Addison Gallery of American Art, MA

Published bySchwartz • Wajahat, New York

The exhibition, James Prosek’s Un/Natural World, was organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art

2110 Blue Ridge RoadRaliegh, NC 27607

Exhibition installation photgraphs courtesy of the North Carolina Museum of Art;Karen Malinofski photographer

All other images courtesy of the artist and Schwartz • Wajahat, New York

Funding for Abstract Fish No. 4 provided by the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving

Myth of Order III, 2014, Birch branches, clay, acrylic paint, 14 x18 x 3 inches

J A M E S P R O S E K

FIELD GUIDE: James Prosek’s Un/Natural World