ENDANGERED: Fine Art & Photography Contest 2018 Submission.

"Orangutan" is part of an ongoing series of animals anthropomorphically presented as if they were kith and kin. Each portrait emphasizes the animal's identity as a member of its species but also as an individual. My style is largely influenced by the rich detail, flat surfaces, and bright and pure coloring of Persian miniature painting, as well as by realism and detail from Germanic Renaissance portraiture. Each subject dominates the composition -- an approach that emphasizes the subject and reveals small painted symbolic details, such as the March for Science pin on Polar Bear of the California Live Oak acorns on the Orangutan's field observations journal. Both of these portraits speaks to our natural world, the unique identity of species and these individuals in particular, the importance of science that honors the natural world, and our own identity as humans as we relate to the natural world around us.

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