The Gallery: Animals 2
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Beth E Peterson
Text and Artwork:
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Watchers Oil 20" x 26" Roaming the Pennsylvania woods, I would occasionally come across a group of deer, almost always a small group of does with their young. Deer are browsers, spending their eating hours at the edges of the woods nibbling on leaves (although they would venture into the corn fields, too. *wink* It always seemed to me that they did less damage eating the corn than laying down in it and flattening large areas of stalks.) They generally prefer to spend the daylight hours under cover in thickets or other safe areas. Every once in a while, though, I would spot them as they went for water or as they moved from place to place. That was always a thrill to me, although I doubt the deer were as thrilled to see me as I was to see them, lol. 
The Lookout Graphite, Colored Pencil & Conté 20" x 26" The Outer Banks of the Eastern seaboard are a fascinating string of barrier islands that stretch from the DelMarVa peninsula to the Georgia coast. In centuries past, tall ships would be swept aground on them from time to time during storms. Several islands were populated by horses which had been cast adrift during these shipwrecks, such as the famous Assateague Island. This drawing was inspired by those forefathers of the present Outer Banks ponies. I can somehow envision one of those first stranded horses looking back over the tops of the calm waves after the storm...looking back to their European past, and forward to their feral descendants who would claim these islands as their homes. To me, this drawing is an expression of how the present ties together the past and the future, and how a single, apparently catastrophic, event can transform what was, and what had been planned to be, to bring about something totally unexpected and enriching. 
Mom's Kid Conté 15" x 20" Mountain goats are so cool! They are highly elusive, not often leaving the most rugged terrain, and in snow fields they are next to impossible to spot. (They actually aren't really goats...they are more closely related to antelope than European goats.) I was privileged to see some in real life while on a trip going through Montana. They were actually quite close, although there was a really deep gorge separating them from us. They were climbing down this particular rock face to a salt lick deeper within the gorge, so we got a ringside seat from the other side. The kids were awesome! So adorable!! And nimble! But if I had been their mother, I would have been flipping at some of their daredevil antics. A couple of them kept playing 'king of the mountain'...only they were using each other as the mountain! But...mountain goat moms' are cool. No matter what, they always have that little uplift to their mouth that makes them look like they're smiling through it all. 
Dancer Conté 20" x 26" Spring is the best time to watch for the animals to dance. Horses will spring into spontaneous little jigs and then go high-tailing it off across the pasture at a gallop, squealing and literally kicking up their heels. Even the staid ole cows will burst into light-hearted romps as the warm breezes and fresh young shoots of new grass do their magic. This drawing was inspired by the horses I have known and loved to watch as they 'dance the spring away', to paraphrase a song, lol. It also employs some of my favorite drawing techniques; I really enjoy using conté on a toned rough-toothed paper. It allows one to travel both upward in the highlights and downward into the darker tones so easily and, to me, so much more effectively than white paper allows for. I guess I find it a much more sculptural approach, and one that gives a more interesting tonal depth and complexity to the work. Certainly, some of my favorite drawings have been done using this method.
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