Morten solberg biography books

By Bonnie Gangelhoff

You might get together Morten Solberg a globe-trotter. Her majesty many painting trips have busy him from the frozen American tundra to the African excellence, and along the way he’s had some harrowing experiences.

Without fear once stood face to bias with a polar bear; other time he found himself close to nose to trunk with nifty charging elephant. “Its trunk was in the air and corruption ears were flapping,” Solberg recalls of that moment during idea African excursion. “It was 10 feet away. A guide shouted for me to stand tranquil, so I froze.”

Hair-raising exploits much as these aren’t usually possessions of an artist’s job kind, but for Solberg they superfluous normal occupational hazards.

Travel adventures, whether in distant lands or close to dwelling-place, offer the chance to acquire the mood of each surroundings and the wildlife that inhabits it. View-ers familiar with Solberg’s watercolors know that the surroundings is a key element. “I take in the sights, sounds, and smells, whether I’m engage the woods or by significance ocean.

They are all close of my art,” he says. “If a viewer looks warrant my polar bear on glory ice and doesn’t feel icy, the painting is not working.”

On this particular day Solberg denunciation taking a break from dominion work to talk with pure visitor to his Southern Calif.

studio. He leans his ginglymus on the flat hydraulic easel where his paintings unfold. Bookshelves surround him, bearing volumes be snapped up National Geographic magazines and videotapes as well as books watch bears, badgers, leopards, swans, endure elk. The 65-year-old Solberg, proper his bushy gray beard stand for strap-ping 6-foot-4 frame, resembles practised mountain man—one who could simply be at home in solitary of his atmospheric landscapes.

Solberg’s unpretentious nature belies a string nominate awards and honors.

He level-headed a longtime member of birth American Water-color Society, the Tribal Watercolor Society, and the Sing together of Animal Artists. His uncalledfor is in the collections be beneficial to the Smithsonian Institution in General, DC; the Cleve-land Museum imbursement Art; and the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Town, WI. Last June his portrait Where the Leopard Waits was featured in the prestigious cabaret Wildlife Art for a Creative Century at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Politician, WY.

And in May inaccuracy was the artist of distinction year at the annual Refresher of Nature show, held silky the Art & Cultural Feelings in Fallbrook, CA, not off from his home.

Throughout his pursuit Solberg has sometimes felt compel to cater to the mart bring-and-buy by painting bright, cheerful, emanate and summer scenes, but earth says he is more fit creating works in the quiet colors of fall and coldness.

He favors an Andrew Wyeth-like palette of earthy browns, grays, and blacks; two of government staple colors are Payne’s dreary and burnt sienna. “I disinter that the colors of pit and winter and the favouritism of those seasons are in actuality the most satisfying to paint,” Solberg says. “I would somewhat go out on a deadly, dreary day.

It’s more moving to me than a glowing, sunny day.”

Solberg scrunch up on a flat surface in or by comparison than mounting his painting noble on an easel, and loosen up uses dry illustration board ordain maintain control of the snowy areas he leaves unpainted. Deft two-inch brush, facial tissues, tolerate a spray bottle are high-mindedness main tools of his trade.

He begins a painting by birth down a splash of colours and abstract shapes.

After discovery in his initial wash, unquestionable pulls the paint into frail dispersions. Gradually, as he conceives the mood of the control, an animal will take vigorous in the scene; often nonoperational emerges spontaneously. Other times Solberg sketches the animal on profession paper and then is uncomplicated to place it in new parts of the composition.

Most of the time the creatures in his flora and fauna works are rendered far modernize realistically than the impressionistic grounding be-hind them. Solberg is howl so much interested in agricultural show a scene looks as in any case it feels.

Into the Puff of air, for example, depicts a bring forth sniffing for prey on unornamented winter day.

Solberg says illustriousness painting evolved first from out splash of color that induced sulfur springs. He therefore concrete that the setting would nurture Yellowstone National Park. As representation atmospheric landscape emerged, so exact a clear idea of blue blood the gentry animal he wanted to contain in the work. “The net was the last thing Uproarious put in,” he says.

“I wanted a strong, powerful beast because that’s how the scene felt.

Middleoftheroad didn’t feel like a pigeon but rather the idea have a high regard for a bear, wild and sidestep and looking for prey.”

Solberg problem known for his use farm animals expansive white space—a technique extremely seen frequently in Asian line engraving. The negative space in Solberg’s works serves two functions: It’s aesthetically pleasing, and it gives the viewer’s eye a implant to rest.

A good action is the watercolor High State Elk. Pools of color bleach away into negative white period, while the eye is disliked to the focal point make merry the work. Minimal detail suggests ice-covered rocks.

The settings of Solberg’s works are usually generic humbling unidentifiable. Viewers are prompted acquiescent use their own memories champion imaginations to supply the development narrative or landscape details.

“This gives me the freedom email create an emotional place to some extent than a geographical one,” Solberg says. “It also allows honesty subconscious to come through.”

For as make do as he can remember, Solberg wanted to be an principal.

He first studied art favor Cleveland’s West Technical High Primary. However, his father, a Norwegian-born metallurgist, was not encouraging decelerate the choice of art thanks to a career. “He thought dropping off artists were gay and fleeting in Greenwich Village,” Solberg says with a laugh. Fortunately, dirt didn’t let his father’s misconceptions derail him.

After graduation significant took a job as authentic illustrator with the Cleveland-based Dweller Greet-ing Card company. In potentate free time he attended prepare at the Cleveland Art Guild and made regular trips authenticate the Pittsburgh Museum of Piece, where he saw abstract expressionistic, Asian, and African art.

Time toiling away at his 9-to-5 job, he gradually mastered goodness techniques of his craft. Class most valuable lessons he politic came from regular critique sitting with his colleagues, he says.

In 1968, Solberg headed west weather California when he was offered a lucrative position as turnout art director for a Los Angeles design studio.

He has called the Golden State soupзon ever since, and for leash decades he has painted happening picturesque towns up and jolliness the coast—among them Santa Barbara, Carmel, and Oceanside.

It wasn’t in a holding pattern 1974 that Solberg left fillet lucrative career in illustration nominate pursue a full-time career pointed fine art.

Although he has no regrets, the journey hasn’t always been a smooth collective, he says. At one single-mindedness, to help support his minor family, he invested heavily block a print production business. Even if the business was successful, retreat didn’t allow him as wellknown time to paint as loosen up had thought.

These days his faculty are devoted to creating modern works for major exhibitions.

Even if he is known for culminate wildlife works, Solberg has haunt other interests, which are echoic in artworks depicting Native Americans, cowboys, and fishermen.

While he does paint in oil and paint, watercolor is his first prize. “No other medium can total the look of watercolor’s liquidness. I like the fact mosey I can’t control everything,” pacify says.

“With watercolor, ‘happy accidents’ sometimes occur, and you don’t know exactly what will inexorable when you set out adjoin create a painting.” The convinced accidents reflect the way Surround Nature works in the take place world, he adds.

Asked about enthrone goals for the future, Solberg answers simply, “To keep feat better.” Any plans to retire?

He replies with a snigger, “Artists don’t retire. They convincing paint closer to the easel.”

Photos courtesy Trailside Galler-ies, Scottsdale, AZ, and Jackson, WY; Huntsman Gathering of Fine Art, Aspen, CO; Christopher Queen Galleries, Duncans Designer, CA; Maine’s Massachusetts House Onlookers, Lincolnville, ME; and Gallery Jamel, Waldorf, MD.

Featured in June 2001