Emil Morhardt

Sleepy Willet

2019

Artist Comments
Willets are usually at the edge of the surf, poking into the wet sand as they follow each wave in and out. This one, when I came on him, was standing above the splash line on one leg asleep. Eventually he noticed me getting closer and closer with my camera and opened his eyes, but still acted sleepy. I painted him with the golden late afternoon sun on his chest and head, and with lavender and gray where his feathers were in shadow.

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.

Sleepy Willet
Emil Morhardt
Acrylic painting on stretched canvas
Finished white edges
Varnished and Ready to hang
One-of-a-kind
Signed on front
2019
30 in. h x 30 in. w x 1.5 in. d
4 lbs. 13 oz.