Emil Morhardt

Sanderling Duo, Original Painting

2019

Artist Comments
Sanderlings race the surf in and out, stopping briefly to probe the wet sand for food before frantically running off again. The front bird is taking a brief feeding break, with wet sand still on his bill and feet. His friend is coming along quickly out of the mist. These shorebirds are mostly black and white when they are in Santa Barbara, and I've painted them against a pure white background.

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. Emil has a BA in Zoology from Pomona College and a PhD in Environmental Physiology and Ecology from Rice University. He also was a Professor of Environmental Biology at Claremont McKenna, Scripps, and Pitzer Colleges.

Words that describe this painting: shorebird, bird, animals, sanderling, animals, realism, representational, acrylic painting, white

Sanderling Duo
Emil Morhardt
Acrylic painting on stretched canvas
Finished white edges
Varnished and Ready to hang
One-of-a-kind
Signed on front
2019
24 in. h x 24 in. w x 1.5 in. d
3 lbs. 13 oz.