The Artwork of Timothy David Mayhew

It gives me extreme pleasure to announce that I have been honored as a recipient of the Artistic Excellence Award, granted by the fine arts journal Southwest Art. I consider this to be an extremely great honor to be selected for this award by the editors of this prestigious fine arts journal.

The December 2011 issue of Southwest Art contains a feature article entitled, Artistic Excellence, written by Southwest Art senior editor Bonnie Gangelhoff, which includes an interview with me and also features an image of my magnum opus oil painting, The Trumpeter’s Tribe. I am very pleased that it was because of this particular oil painting that I was selected for the Artistic Excellence Award. This fact makes this prestigious award very meaningful to me due to the considerable study and effort, invested across the span of a year, which went into breathing life into The Trumpeter’s Tribe.

Southwest Art is the definitive source of information and inspiration for fine art in and of the American West. With excellence as their standard, they champion today’s best emerging and established artists and their artworks, which vary from traditional representational to more modern styles in wide-ranging media. They are a catalyst and forum for meaningful exchange between creators, purveyors, and patrons of fine art. Southwest Art is an invaluable resource for collectors and connoisseurs who are passionate about art, and an essential vehicle to reach this highly-targeted, responsive, and affluent audience.

Currently my painting, The Trumpeter’s Tribe, has just finished hanging in its debut exhibition in the internationally renowned 2011 Birds in Art exhibition at the Woodson Art Museum. In addition, it was selected for inclusion in the 2012 Birds in Art touring exhibition which is scheduled for a series of Museum exhibitions across the country. The venues for this touring exhibition will include the Rolling Hills Wildlife Museum, in Salina, Kansas, from December 3, 2011 to January 8, 2012; the Brookgreen Gardens, in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, from January 28 to April 22, 2012; the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, from May 26 to July 28, 2012; the Loveland Museum, in Loveland, Colorado, from August 18 to October 28, 2012 and finally the University of Alaska Anchorage Student Union Gallery, from November 17, 2012 to January 20, 2013.

I am greatly honored and appreciative of receiving the prestigious Artistic Excellence Award from Southwest Art, and I am also greatly appreciative of the continuing public exposure that this painting will be receiving during the 2012 Birds in Art Tour. After the tour is completed, The Trumpeter’s Tribe will be returned to me and I really have to say that I am anxiously looking forward to seeing it again.

I am extremely honored to announce that I have been invited to give a lecture on my research into the nature of the traditional natural black chalk drawing materials used by the old masters at the one of the nation’s most prestigious museums, the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC. This lecture, as well as discussions on the traditional drawing techniques used in several of the old master drawings from the collection of the National Gallery of Art is scheduled for November 2-5, 2011, and will include much of the information from the manuscript, Natural black chalk in old master drawing, that was published earlier this year in the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation.

The National Gallery of Art was created in 1937 for the people of the United States of America by a joint resolution of Congress, accepting the gift of financier and art collector Andrew W. Mellon. During the 1920s, Mr. Mellon began collecting with the intention of forming a gallery of art for the nation in Washington. In 1937, the year of his death, he promised his collection to the United States, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted the completed building and the collections on behalf of the people of the United States of America, which includes the museum's acquisition of such masterpieces as Peter Paul Rubens' Daniel in the Lions' Den, Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra de'Benci, and countless others.

The mission of the National Gallery of Art is to serve the United States of America in a national role by preserving, collecting, exhibiting, and fostering the understanding of works of art, at the highest possible museum and scholarly standards. The Gallery's role as an institution dedicated to fostering an understanding of works of art operates on a broad spectrum. From advanced research conducted both at its Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts and by its curators, to the dissemination of knowledge to its visitors and to the widest possible student and general public audiences, the Gallery is an educative institution.

For myself, I am really looking forward to being able to sit down for a few days in the Museum’s archives to study their large collection of drawings by the great old master artists, these were my teachers and I learned to draw from them over the past 30 years, so to me it does not get any better than that.

Woodson Art Museum’s 2012 Birds in Art Touring Exhibition…September 13, 2011.

I am delighted to report that my oil painting, The Trumpeter’s Tribe, which is currently hanging in the 2011 Birds in Art exhibition at the Woodson Art Museum, has just been selected for the 2012 Birds in Art touring exhibition.

The Woodson Art Museum staff selected 59 works of art from the entire 128 artworks that comprised the Museum’s prestigious 36th Annual Birds in Art 2011 exhibition to be part of the national Birds in Art touring exhibition. Being selected for this tour is a very great honor, and it provides a national forum and wider audience for the selected works of art and the artists who created them.

The 2012 Birds in Art touring exhibition is scheduled to be featured at the following Museums and Institutions:

Rolling Hills Wildlife, Salina, Kansas, from December 3, 2011 – January 8, 2012.
Brookgreen Gardens, Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, from January 28 – April 22, 2012.
Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, Michigan, from May 26 – July 28, 2012.
Loveland Museum, Loveland, Colorado, from August 18 – October 28, 2012.
University of Alaska Anchorage Student Union Gallery, from November 17, 2012 – January 20, 2013.

The 36th annual Birds in Art exhibition is currently on display at the Woodson Art Museum through November 13, 2011, and it is an impressive exhibition of avian artwork created by the top artists from around the world. The 2012 national touring exhibition of Birds in Art is a special selection of 59 of the best works of art from the full exhibition. Hopefully, this impressive exhibition will tour near you affording you the chance to see it in person.

My oil painting, The Trumpeter’s Tribe, is my magnum opus resulting from my year of intensive studies of Trumpeter swan during 2010. It is a very large oil painting of a grouping of five Trumpeter swans. I was able to create an interesting and dynamic composition of two adult Trumpeters with their three young cygnets swimming in the water and each swan is demonstrating some unique aspect of trumpeter swan behavior. The painting is alliteratively entitled, The Trumpeter’s Tribe, and each of the 5 swans in the painting were studied individually and came from the numerous studies, drawings, and small oil paintings created during my field trips to Western Wyoming during my Year of the Trumpeter Swan. An image of this painting is on the home page of my website, which you can access at the link below.

August 24, 2011

Right side study of a bull elk sniffing the air

You may recall from an earlier newsletter that I am soon to depart for the opening reception of the prestigious international Birds in Art exhibition at the Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin. When I return from that exhibition, I will barely have a couple of days to catch my breath before I again depart for the artists’ reception for another very important exhibition.

I am greatly looking forward to the National Museum of Wildlife Art’s upcoming 24th annual Western Visions exhibition, which will began on August 20th and will conclude on September 25, 2011. There will be two receptions, with live music, fine dining and the opportunity to mix and mingle with many of the country’s leading artists, which will be held on September 15th and 16th, 2011. The Western Visions exhibition creates a nationally recognized fundraising and cultivation event for visitors and collectors to engage leading contemporary artists who are creating artwork about humanity’s relationship with nature, including those who are, and those who aspire, to be included in the Museum’s permanent collection.

This exhibition is one of the highlights of my year as I can combine a prestigious nationally recognized exhibition of fine art with the opportunity for invaluable field studies in the Greater Yellowstone Region. I always end up putting in very long and grueling days while I am there, getting up each day before dawn in order to trek deep into the backcountry to study the charismatic megafauna in their natural environment. After a long day of studying these fascinating creatures, by late afternoon I need to hike out in time to get cleaned up in order to attend the important Western Visions exhibition events at the museum in the evenings where I look forward to meeting some incredible and knowledgeable art collectors. The next day will find me repeating the same schedule, awakening before dawn to hike into the backcountry for another day of tracking and study. Very long days, actually pretty hard work, but it keeps my juices flowing and I love it.

I made a trip to the Jackson Hole area earlier this summer and was able to locate one of the biggest bull moose that I have seen in many years. Although he was still in his velvet coat, growing out his new antlers, by the time I return in September he will have shed the vascular velvet coating from his newly formed antlers and be in his fully crowned glory. I was very fortunate to have been able to scout out his habitat, which will make tracking and locating him easier this fall. I am looking forward to spending some quality time in the field studying him.

The National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, was founded to enrich international appreciation and knowledge of fine art. The museum has an internationally acclaimed collection of over 5,000 catalogued items and they strive to inspire public appreciation of fine art, wildlife, and humanity's relationship with nature with their collections, exhibitions, research, educational programs and publications. The museum’s stunning building overlooks the 25,000-acre National Elk Refuge and is en route to the Grand Tetons National Park and Yellowstone National Park. There is a seamless connection between the museum, its mission, wildlife subject matter and wilderness location. The Greater Yellowstone Region is one of the few remaining areas of the United States where native wildlife still roam abundantly and free.

The National Museum of Wildlife Art is located at 2820 Rungius Road in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.For more information please contact the Museum at 800-313-9553, or visit their website at: http://www.wildlifeart.org.

If you have any questions, comments, or if you would like to know what artwork I will have in the exhibition, I’d love to hear from you.

I have discovered that the wheels of the peer-reviewed publication process grind very slowly, but the necessary processes involved actually do produce excellent results.

I am very pleased to announce that the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation [JAIC] has published the manuscript, Natural black chalk in old master drawings, in their current issue. This manuscript was written by myself, along with my colleagues, Supapan Seraphin and Margo Ellis, both of the University of Arizona. I was particularly delighted when I discovered that an image from the manuscript was featured on the cover of the issue.

Natural black chalk was a highly valued drawing medium that was quarried from the earth and fashioned into a drawing tool for more than four centuries by European old master artists. It was widely used by artists such as da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Rembrandt and numerous others. However, the use of natural black chalk had been lost to the artistic community as its use stopped about two centuries ago. Thus, information had become scarce concerning its geology, chemical composition, methods of quarrying, how it was processed, and the traditional techniques by which it was used for drawing purposes. The research detailed in this manuscript fills in these knowledge gaps for this beautiful and historically important traditional drawing medium.

The manuscript was greatly strengthened by several invaluable field emission scanning electron microscopic images and chemical compositional analyses, which were done on actual natural black chalk specimens from my own collection, by my co-authors at the University of Arizona’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering. It was not an easy task trying to pull together nearly 20 years of my research and experience working with this lost old master drawing medium, but I feel that it was well worth the effort now that I can finally see it in print.

I consider the publication of the manuscript by this particular journal to be an extremely high honor as the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation is an internationally renowned and respected major periodical dealing with the conservation of historic and cultural works. The journal’s parent organization, the American Institute for Conservation [AIC]is the largest conservation membership organization in the United States, and counts among its more than 3000 members, the majority of which are professional conservators, conservation educators, and conservation scientists worldwide.

The Journal of the American Institute for Conservation [JAIC] is the primary vehicle for the publication of peer-reviewed technical studies, research papers, treatment case studies, ethics and standards, as well as discussions relating to the broad field of conservation and preservation of historic and cultural works. Subscribers to the JAIC include AIC members, both individuals and institutions, as well as major museums, libraries, and universities throughout the world.

June 15, 2011

I am pleased to announce that I have received an invitation from the State of New Mexico Legislative Council and the Capitol Art Foundation, to an honor reception for the artists whose artwork has recently been acquired by the Capitol Art Collection. The reception will be held on Friday, July 15, 2011, in the Rotunda of the State Capitol building in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Santa Fe is world renowned for its plethora of art in museums and galleries, which can often be overwhelming for visitors. The Capitol Art Collection is among the most comprehensive collections of contemporary art in the region, featuring works by artists from Taos to Tucumcari and everywhere in between. The artwork is on permanent exhibition in the Capitol Art Collection and in temporary exhibitions in one of the Rotunda shows.

The New Mexico State Capitol is often referred to as The Roundhouse because of its circular structure, and it houses this permanent, public collection of contemporary art created by the best artists of New Mexico. It is a unique example of how art and politics can enhance each other. The Roundhouse’s circular and spacious design, offers optimal and abundant wall space and dramatic viewing angles. The collection exists throughout the Capitol Complex, with the artwork on displayinthe main building, the Annex walkway, the North Annex, and on the grounds. The Capitol Art Collection was created by the New Mexico Legislature when they founded the Capitol Art Foundation, a nonprofit art organization whose sole purpose is to direct the Capitol Art Collection and oversee the selection, acquisition, and exhibition of the artwork.

I consider it a great honor to have my artwork included in such an important collection as the Capitol Art Collection.

I am pleased to announce that I have been invited to take part in the Masters in Miniature exhibition and sale at the prestigious Trailside Galleries in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. This exhibition of small paintings and sculptures will be held from July 4-21, 2011 and there will be an Artists Reception on Thursday, July 21st from 5-8 pm.

With galleries in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Scottsdale, Arizona, the Trailside Galleries are renowned as the premier Western Art Gallery specializing in works by leading contemporary western artists for the discerning collector. A hallmark of excellence since 1963, the Trailside Galleries actively represent the finest painters and sculptors in the United States and feature an unequaled collection of art across several genres, including Western Art, Native American Art, Impressionism, Figurative, Landscape Art, Southwestern Art, and Wildlife Art. Their artist roster includes members of the Cowboy Artists of America and the Prix de West. .

The Trailside Galleries in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, are located at 130 East Broadway. If you would like more information on this important exhibition and sale, their phone number is (307) 733-3186 and their website is:

If you have any comments, or if you would like to know which paintings I will have in this exhibition, I’d love to hear from you.

May 20, 2011

The National Museum of Wildlife Art’s Paintbox Society is hosting the Out of the Box Exhibition and Auction, which will be held at the Museum in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Friday, June 24, 2011.

The Painttbox Society exhibitions are valued fundraisers for the Museum and this will be the sixth exhibition and auction in this series of biennial events. This is a wonderful exhibition featuring national and local artists whose hand painted boxes will be offered in all shapes, sizes, themes, and prices, promising something for everyone. Proceeds from the silent and live auctions will support the Museum’s important adult and youth education programs.

The term, ‘Paintbox’, has an interesting history. The renowned wildlife artist, Carl Rungius did a considerable amount of fieldwork in the Canadian Rockies. There he found many valuable opportunities to hunt, explore, and paint. He especially liked the backcountry near Banff, Canada, so much that in 1921 he built a summer studio there, which he named The Paintbox. He worked in his ’Paintbox’ studio, which he also used as a base to explore the wilderness surrounding the Banff area, each year from April to October for a total of 38 years until his death in 1959.

This year I have submitted an oil painting of a swimming Trumpeter swan, which I painted on the hardwood lid of a Cohiba cigar box, as my contribution in support of this noble cause. This painting was based on a drawing of a Trumpeter swan from my field studies in the Tetons last summer while I was the Lanford Monroe Artist in Residence at the National Museum of Wildlife Art.

The National Museum of Wildlife Art is located at 2820 Rungius Road in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.For more information on the Paintbox Society’s Out of the Box Exhibition and Auction please contact the Museum at 800-313-9553, or visit their website at: http://www.wildlifeart.org.

I am very pleased to announce that my oil painting, The Trumpeter’s Tribe [oil on Belgian linen, 36 x 48 inches], has just been selected for the 2011 Birds in Art exhibition at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum.

This painting is of great significance to me as it is my magnum opus, the culmination of my intensive 2010 Year of the Trumpeter Swan studies. At the end of 2010, I had designed the composition and began working on this large oil painting depicting a grouping of five Trumpeter swans. I was trying to create an interesting and dynamic composition of two adult Trumpeters with their three young cygnets swimming in the water, making sure that each swan is demonstrating some unique aspect of Trumpeter swan behavior. The painting was finished in March 2011 and was given the alliterative title, The Trumpeter’s Tribe. In the process of designing and composing this oil painting, each of the 5 swans in the painting were studied individually and came from the numerous Trumpeter swan studies, drawings, and oil paintings created during my 2010 field studies in Western Wyoming and my anatomical studies at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Since 1976, the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum has organized the Birds in Art exhibition on an annual basis, to present the very best contemporary artistic interpretations of birds and related subject matter. Three simple words – birds in art – took on a life of their own when they became a Woodson Art Museum exhibition title. Over the years, Birds in Art has grown into what is recognized around the world as the exhibition that sets the standard for avian art.

The museum believes that the Birds in Art phenomenon has a lot to do with serendipity and even more to do with the remarkable talents of the artists who present their very best work interpreting birds and related subject matter and can be credited for the success of Birds in Art. The artists invited to exhibit in this years’ Birds in Art exhibition come not only from the United States, but also from other countries including Holland, Sweden, England, Scotland, France, Germany, Japan, Israel, India, South Africa, Italy, and Australia.

As the Museum’s flagship exhibition, Birds in Art enables the Museum to meet its goals of presenting and collecting art of the natural world having birds as the primary or secondary focus. A fully illustrated, four-color catalogue accompanies each Birds in Art exhibition.

The Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum is in Waussau, Wisconsin and the exact dates of the Birds in Art exhibition are September 9th through November 13, 2011.

If you have any questions or comments, or if you would like to see an image of The Trumpeter’s Tribe, I’d love to hear from you.

Here it is the middle of May already and I regret to say that I am running into a few snags with my The Year of the Osprey studies. In selecting this fascinating species, I am finding that there were some inherent issues that I did not anticipate. Firstly, since they are a migratory species they have been gone all winter to warmer climes and are only recently returning to this area. This aspect has been frustrating because the year is nearly half over and I have not been able to study very much, other than my anatomical studies at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in February. However, now that they have returned, my initial field studies of them have been problematic. Either they are spending much of their time in the nest, where I could only see their head and neck from my vantage point, or they are flying, which is a beautiful thing to behold, but unfortunately they are too fast in flight for me to do any meaningful drawings. At this point in the year, due to these unforeseen issues I find that I am starting to rethink my selection of this elegant species.

That said, I have not been idle, for I have been spending a lot of time this winter studying the greater Sandhill cranes in their refuge in southern New Mexico. In late March, they started their northern migration, which brought them even closer to my studio where they stop to rest and feed at the refuges in southern Colorado. As I look at the numerous drawings and paintings I have produced thus far in 2011, what I found is that the vast majority of them are of the elegant Sandhill cranes.

I do have a trip to northwestern Wyoming in July where I will try once more to do some more field studies of the osprey. I am still very much in awe of their flying abilities, but if I run into the same issues up there, I will also be able to continue to study the Sandhill cranes in their summer breeding grounds in the northern Rocky Mountains.

That said, I had a recent email conversation with a good friend discussing these issues and I half-jokingly wrote that it looks like I need to rethink my intensive 2011 The Year of the Osprey studies because so far this seems to be The Year That Really Wasn’t About Osprey, but on the Other Hand Was Actually the Year of the Sandhill Crane. Rather wordy…perhaps I should wordsmith and shorten it to just The Year of the Sandhill Crane.

As 2010 came to a close, I had designed the composition and began working on a very large oil painting of a grouping of five Trumpeter swans, an adult pair in the water with their three young cygnets. This complex group composition was the result of the numerous studies, drawings, and oil paintings of Trumpeter swans that were undertaken by me during 2010. As I looked back at the outcome of my intensive study of Trumpeter swans, an effort that I had affectionately named The Year of the Trumpeter swan, I began to fully appreciate the merit of this working method. There were many rewards and benefits resulting from this focused project, both on an artistic level as well as on a critical level. My Trumpeter swan drawings, small paintings, and larger paintings were widely-exhibited in several very prestigious museums, and a large number of them were acquired by major museums and individual collectors alike.

As I began to see these benefits materializing, I realized that I needed to find a suitable subject for a similar study to take up during 2011. As I was casting about for another equally impressive species to focus on, my travels lead me to the fascinating environments of several avian candidates, including the white pelicans of the Yellowstone, some rather interesting Teton cormorants, the Sandhill cranes of the Bosque del Apache, and many others. However, there was one avian acrobat that truly struck a chord within me, and that was the osprey that I encountered in western Wyoming.

Thus, after long contemplation, I have decided to undertake an intensive study of osprey during 2011, an effort that I plan to refer to as The Year of the Osprey in keeping with the precedence set with my Trumpeter swan studies. Of course, this does not mean that I will stop studying the moose, wolf, elk, or other charismatic megafauna that I encounter during the year, but it does mean that I will allocate a significant level of effort and intensive study into learning as much as I can about the osprey to enable me produce my best possible work.

My choice of the osprey came about due to my experiences during the month of July in 2010 when I was living and working in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as the Langford Monroe Memorial Artist-in-Residence at the National Museum of Wildlife Art. The Museum had arranged for me to stay for the month in a guesthouse located along the impressive Snake River, which was owned by a wonderful couple whom I now call my friends. I spent many mornings and evenings hiking along the Snake River, and I was very impressed by a natural osprey nest located in a nearby cottonwood tree.

Previous to this encounter, I had seen osprey nests that were built atop platforms on utility poles, no doubt the result of worthy efforts to help this species increase their numbers. But that image, with its surreal environment, never left me with a very natural feeling nor did it do much to inspire me as an artist. However, watching this family of osprey as they interacted in a natural environment in their cottonwood tree nest was very memorable indeed. It was fascinating to observe the aerial acrobatics of these amazing birds as they flew to the Snake River, splashed down into the water to catch a fish, return with their catch to then nail a safe landing in their nest, touching down deftly between their hatchlings with amazing pinpoint accuracy. Their agility in flight, and the way their wings were working, were reminiscent of the aerial capabilities of a helicopter.

Thus, I am now busily making plans for my 2011 field studies and travels, which will include the anatomical study of osprey specimens in the archives of a few major Museums of Natural History, several trips to the ospreys’ natural environment to observe them and their offspring at various life stages, and eventually bringing everything back into the studio to pull it all together. To me there is no better way to occupy my time, or to live for that matter, and I am looking forward to the entire process. If the results that came out of the 2010 Trumpeter swan studies were any indication, I cannot wait to see what results from this new effort.

I hope you will have a wonderful year in 2011 and, as always, if you have any questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you.