Emil Morhardt

Alone Together, Original Painting

2023

Artist Comments
Artist Emil Morhardt paints a glaucous-winged gull lifting off Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska. He paints the bird splashing the crystalline water in detailed realism. "These big gulls are unafraid of brown bears, dodging between their legs to grab morsels," says Emil. He highlights the piece with a silvery edge reflecting a dazzlingly sunny day.

About the Artist
Emil Morhardt is an acrylic painter from Santa Barbara, California who expresses his passion for birds through realistic acrylic paintings. He paints at home in a studio room that has large windows and a north-facing view of the mountains. He observes the animals from this window, watching roadrunners, foxes, bobcats, deer, and coyote run by. Surrounded by this wildlife, Emil paints bird portraits reminiscent of those by artist John James Audubon. He bases his paintings off hundreds of photographs he takes of birds in the wild and at wildlife recovery centers. Emil captures the freedom and inquisitiveness that birds display in the natural world. Before painting birds, he painted landscapes of San Francisco and the Eastern Sierra. Emil was raised in the high desert of California and learned to paint from his father, who was one of the early California watercolorists...

Artist Comments
"Who knew that Snowy Egrets at the beach hunted beetles?" says artist Emil Morhardt. "This one was stealthily sneaking up on some...

Artist Comments
A close-up view of two ducks looking astutely at the viewer. "There's something highly engaging, and perhaps a little unsettling, about the way these young fe...

Artist Comments
Two geese turn to regard the viewer along the grassy bank of a quiet lake. "Growing up with my older sister, my mom would always dress us in the exact same clothes," shares Jo Galang. "With the same haircut and similar looks, people would always mistake us for twins since we were almost the same size and height. It was fun back then but as we grew up, we each evolved into our own distinct personalities."

About the Artist
Artist Jo Galang expresses a quiet nostalgia in her airy interpretations of the landscapes and waterways of the Pacific Northwest. Her soft oil paintings capture the meditative sounds of rivers and waterfalls flowing past her easel. During the summer, she spends as much time as possible outside creating plein air sketches and studying the light on the landscape. As a young art student in the Philippines, Jo was privileged to study with the renowned painter Danilo Dalena, who she says encouraged her to be the artist she is today. "I believe my art looks simple enough that people have no idea how much time I have spent working on it," she says. When she is not painting, Jo and her husband enjoy taking road trips, playing cards and finding creative ways to spend time with their granddaughter.

Words that describe this painting: animals, birds, Canada geese, geese, lake, landscape, nature, summer, water, waterfowl, grass, classical, wildlife, animals, classical, realism, representational, oil painting, green

Two Peas in a Pod...