Bev Doolittle, Bear and Chipmunk, "No Respect", 7770/25000, Signed, #171 Sold

Bear Art

Bev Doolittle Painting

171. Description: Bev Doolittle: 7770/25000, Bear and Chipmonk-"No Respect". Purchased from a gallery in Northern VA as a commemorative piece of art depicting my run in with a Grizzly Bear and Chipmunk on an elk hunt in Wyoming. About half way through a 10 day Elk hunting trip in the mountains of Wyoming, I had a major run in with a Grizzly Bear that came within 25 feet of me. The wind was in my face, so he could not smell me or I would have been toast. He was standing on his hind legs looking straight at me wondering what I might be. Out of the blue the thought of barking like a dog came to me. This action saved my life.

The next day, I was hunting above tree line and was sitting on a pile of rocks minding my own business when out from the pile came this chipmunk who promptly climbed upon my boot and gave me the business for sitting on his house. I watched him in wonder for a while and then he finally went back into his house. When I got home from this life changing hunt, I stumbled upon this Doolittle print which seemed to capture the extremes that I had experienced, so I bought it and it has been in my collection ever since.

Size: 10 x 13 inches.

The Artist: Bev Doolittle (born February 10, 1947) is an American artist working mainly in watercolor paints. She creates paintings of the American West that feature themes of Native American life, wild animals, horses, and landscapes.[1]

Doolittle attended college at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, where she met her husband, Jay Doolittle.[2] The Doolittles, after a brief career as graphic artists, became "traveling artists" and drove in a motorhome around the American southwest, painting scenes of the landscape as they went.

It was during this period that Bev's expansive paintings of the American Western landscape and its wildlife began to develop and soon after, she began to portray Native Americans often including them alongside animal themes.

Doolittle has become a popular artist in the United States, and her original paintings and prints are collected widely by those interested in the Western themes she portrays. Realistic Western art has conventionally been dominated by oil painting, and Doolittle was instrumental in bringing watercolors into the genre, and garnering respect for this medium from collectors of Western art.

Doolittle has also co-authored and illustrated several books. She has long been interested in the plight of Native Americans, wild animals, and ecological and environmental issues and her books like her paintings focus on these issues.

A unique and distinctive aspect of her art is what she refers to as "a camouflage technique" in which certain details of her art can be seen in more than one way; for example, in "The Forest Has Eyes," the rocks and waterfalls seen close up appear as the faces of Native Americans when viewed from a distance. In "Mesa Ruins," close-up viewing appears to show the Mesa Verde Canyon Anasazi dwellings, although from a distance it gives an impression of the eye and nose of a Native American male. In "Shoshone Switchback," the snow-filled meadow in which horseback riders are crossing appears from farther away to be the shape of a running horse.

Perhaps her most impressive work is a twenty-four set collection of paintings of dark-brown horses set against light brown rocks and white snow, which from a distance and arranged in order spells out the words "Hide and Seek."[3]

References:

1. BIOGRAPHY for Bev Doolittle. AskArt. Retrieved 9 February 2012.
2. Bev Doolittle biography. River Wind Gallery. Retrieved 9 February 2012.
3. http://www.theequinest.com/images/bev-doolittle-5.jpg

Further reading:

The Art of Bev Doolittle. Bev Doolittle and Elise Maclay. New York: Bantam. 1990
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