As with everything else, if enough people wrote and complained to OPA perhaps they would change it, especially since a lot of their artists belong in the wildlife category. Seems strange to me that events such as the Southeast Wildlife Festival held each year in Charleston, SC draws more artists and people than any other art event I know of. Wildlife art has always been at the bottom of the list in almost all museums, galleries and shows, yet wildlife art and western art are huge sellers, bringing in mega dollars to the overall art sales each year.

Wildlife Art Magazine was a wonderful publication. I don’t know what went wrong there. What bothers me is that their website is still up and says nothing about it no longer publishing. plus, it still allows you to subscribe. This means that if you pay for your subscription online or by mail your money is gone forever.

Again, it’s kind of humorous that one of the greatest American wildlife artists Bob Kuhn — spent most of his career as “just an illustrator.”

There seems to be a lot of snobbishness in the art world. People like to believe that their art is the only “true art”. One artist friend of mine actually frowned on the fact that I was painting with acrylics. It’s a bunch of nonsense. When it comes right down to it, ART is pretty much ALL subjective.

I think simply “obnoxious” would have covered it pretty well.

One of the things that I find amusing (in an obnoxious sort of way) about the art world is that it is largely the people who do not do the art themselves who are the ones who decide what is — and what is not — art.

Perhaps artists need to unionize or something because it just seems absurd to me that those who could not paint (or even recognize) a prickly pear if their life depended on it are deciding whether a painting of a grizzly bear (or any other subject) is any good.

I realize the practicalities of the whole thing: the gallery’s and art dealers control all the money. But still, especially with the internet, there must be a way of changing that.

BTW, Julie. How do you get your dog to run those gates like that? do you have to show her how to do it? Must be exhausting training dogs.

That said, it does peeve me that the OPA national competition only has categories for figurative, landscape, or still life…as if the other 99% of living beings in this world aren’t worthy of being painted. Considering that humankind’s very first artistic interpretations were of animals, and that we’re not the only ones on this planet, I find the 3 OPA categories obnoxiously anthropocentric.

One of my gallery dealers responded to the Artzine by suggesting that landscape and animal art should be lumped together into one category of NATURE ART.