Fieldsports Journal, John Banovich, Captured on Canvas

VOLUME VII

ISSUE I

£12.95

canvas We speak to this month’s cover artist, John Banovich, about his dramatic painting of a Cooper’s hawk in pursuit of a flushing quail, and why his art expeditions to Africa inspired him to set up a wildlife conservation charity, the Wildscapes Foundation

So, who is John Banovich?

I see and experience everything through the lens of an artist – and I think that has always been the case, since my rst oil painting of Rudyard Kipling’s jungle characters when I was seven years old. I was lucky to have supportive parents. ey let me paint with oils at their dining room table – and believe me, oil paints are incredibly unforgiving.

I’m a person who loves everything wild, and I say that with the deepest conviction. Intact ecosystems and wild spaces are becoming fewer and more fragile across the globe, and I believe that we’re living in a pretty amazing time, poised between the old world and the new. So I’m a person who has gratitude, appreciating this moment, whilst doing everything I can to help wildlife populations and put them on a positive trajectory for the future.

In early adulthood, I tried various careers, but in 1993 entered the Paci c Rim wildlife art show which at the time was the largest show on the West Coast. I won Best of Show.

As an unknown artist, no one had ever heard of me before, and that got me a publishing contract and I ew to Africa for my very rst trip. is changed my life, and I never looked back. I felt like I’d boarded a rocket ship and I’ve been hanging on ever since. I love wildlife. I love nature.

And I can’t get enough of it. I remember collecting wildlife when I was young – when out with my father on a hunt I would bring the duck home that didn’t die, rehabilitate it and let it go free.

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Tell us why you founded the Wildscapes Foundation.

I became a non-hunter in my early 20s because I didn’t like killing wildlife. I thought if you want to save it you don’t kill it. But then I realized that hunting is an incredibly efficient, effective conservation tool when done sustainably. A huge majority of Africa’s remaining wildlife habitat lies outside of national parks or reserves and inside some kind of hunting mandate. Kenya is an exception, of course, but it is fascinating that even with mismanagement, corruption and other problems, wildlife still does better under a hunting mandate.

And the simple reason is the economic incentive to tolerate it.

With our foundation we try to bring the non-hunting community together with the hunting community. One side believes it’s wrong to kill and the other believes they have the right to kill. At the end of the day, though, who cares?

What matters is there’s more wildlife tomorrow than there was yesterday. Since the charity was founded in 2007, we have been involved in a huge range of projects, from tting rhino tracking devices in Namibia to better understand their movements, to building schools and birthing clinics in local communities.

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Tell us about the quail on the cover. e Cooper’s hawk (also known by the name ‘the blue darter’) is a medium-sized bird of prey that tears around woodlands at high speed in pursuit of other birds. You often see them on plantations, where they are equally loved and hated by quail shooters as they prey on the release birds. When you look at the painting on the cover, the Cooper’s hawk beak is pretty much in the centre of the canvas, which I designed to help people understand how that hawk is locked in on his prey; his radar is on one quail, even though there’s chaos going on around him, and he’s going to take that quail out.

When the quail sees a Cooper hawk coming, it will try to hit the ground or run into a bush, to a place the hawk can’t get.

But that hawk is not a lot bigger than the quail so it can go pretty much everywhere that quail can, and it’s like a missile.

I put loose feathers in the piece to create movement. And the lack of background means you just see the birds and the movement and that intense gaze coming from the predator.

My first quail painting was commissioned by a well-known American hedge fund manager who bought a massive quail plantation. The home was almost all glass with just two opaque surfaces: a fireplace at each end about 150 feet apart. And on those fireplaces were to be the two paintings.

I knew that they were going to be really important paintings and decided to paint two flushes of birds: one of quail and the other of ring-necked ducks. It took me a year and a half to get the reference material. I hired a couple of wellknown birds of prey photographers. I bought quail and performed releases with a falconer. On four occasions, I went to quail pens where they have these long flight runs and would get down at the far end and have them all come flying towards me.

Do you listen to anything while you work?

When I’m getting ready for an exhibition, I’ll be in the studio 18 hours a day, so yes. I listen to the business channel, Public Radio, rock music. Rarely is it silent in my studio.

Describe your studio.

My studio is here at home in Seattle, having sold my previous studio on the Yellowstone river to John Mayer who turned it into a recording studio. It has a huge collection of artefacts from around the world – a lot of taxidermy and skulls of elephant, rhino and hippo. I love skulls; they are really organic sculptures and help me understand what’s underneath the esh.

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Which piece are you most proud of?

before? I’m always pushing myself to tell a story that hasn’t yet been told.

I couldn’t choose one. I mean, the perfect painting never happens, although you always think it might. ere is that moment when I visualise a painting, and I think this is the one. I jump into the bowels of creativity and it crushes me and it’s all I think about for weeks. And then right before it nishes, I come above the surface, but never feel that euphoria. As an artist you think tomorrow’s painting is going to be your masterpiece, but it never is. So the goal is just to be in the neighbourhood – and if it’s not you throw it away or give it to a cousin.

What makes your style of art unique? ere’s no length I won’t go to in order to understand my subject. I’ll swim with elephants. I’ll enter croc-infested waters. I’ll hide by a lion kill and hope the lion doesn’t see me watching as the esh of its prey is ripped apart. I love to be submerged into that world. Research is what I love to do.

Tell us something about yourself not many people know.

When I create art, I ask myself three questions. Did I capture the story? Did I execute it well with my materials?

And is it something that we’re seeing with a fresh perspective? ere’s nothing wrong with a nice illustration of an animal, but for me it’s got to be something that I feel I’ve never seen before. And that’s the hardest part: how do you paint a lion that hasn’t been painted a thousand times

Gosh, that is a killer question. I won the Mr Montana bodybuilding competition in 1983. I attempted to qualify for Mr America but ended up fourth place in the transwestern continental trials. It was pretty insane, and it was at that point that I decided to become an artist instead. johnbanovich.com

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