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Spend 10 minutes with artists D. Arthur & Lisa Wilson in the gallery that features their work and you’ll walk away refreshed and smiling as if your day somehow just got a little better.
A visit to the Wilson Signature Collection Fine Art Gallery is a uniquely satisfying experience. Don’t let the long name fool you into thinking it’s an unapproachable bastion of fine art with a museum-like atmosphere and a staff that seems to judge anyone who walks in out of the heat.
The Wilsons’ gallery, 407 D Front St., is anything but.
Lisa Wilson’s layered abstracts exude a soothing, coastal undercurrent.
D. Arthur’s renowned in-your-face wildlife paintings, pastels and bronze sculptures are so starkly detailed, they demand to be studied more than just seen. To be noticed, explored and remarked upon — each crease on an African elephant’s face, a crouched cheetah’s splayed whiskers.
The wildlife works are the result of D. Arthur Wilson’s 35 trips to Africa, where he shoots nothing but photographs. His artwork has also raised more than $2 million for African wildlife rescue efforts.
“I started out as a portrait artist, but I ended up painting egos and not the way people really looked,” he said. “With animals, you don’t have to paint their egos.”
Surely an artist this precise, this exacting, must be the “diffcult-to-deal-with” type — as serious and unforgiving as his tigers and cheetahs.
But then your gaze wanders to the right — and you laugh out loud at the insistent ostrich demanding your attention from every painting in every frame.
Meet Rhupert, D. Arthur Wilson’s answer to anyone who takes life, or themselves, too seriously.
“I’ve tried painting what sells; I’ve tried painting trends, and it’s never worked out for me,” D. Arthur Wilson said on a recent morning in the gallery. “But when I paint what I’m inspired by, that never fails.”
And some time, more than 21 years ago, he was inspired to paint a bright-eyed ostrich, poking his face into the corner of each painting.
Rhupert was photo-bombing Wilson’s paintings before photo-bombing was a word. And people fell in love with this inquisitive, incessant bird. Not all fine art galleries that featured Wilson’s wildlife realism felt the same, though.
“Forty-some galleries dropped me when Rhupert came out,” Wilson recalled. “They considered it whimsical and not real art.”
So Wilson took his ostrich and left. And the two have had a fruitful and fun relationship ever since.
“A few psychologists actually have Rhuperts in their office to provide a little levity,” Wilson said. “He just demands, ‘Look at me.’ A relationship with this bird is inescapable. Rhupert is egotistical and self-centered, like so many people in our lives. But he’s also curious and unapologetically himself.”And that suits the Wilsons just fine. Stop into the gallery at 407 D Front St. or visit wilsonsignaturecollection.com or call 305-434-0170.
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