A self-taught printmaker and compulsive wanderer of landscapes, Sherrie York is an accomplished artist with an international reputation for lyrical and expressive works on paper. A long-ago college field trip to draw backyard chickens was the unexpected genesis of a career that has encompassed environmental education, natural history illustration, and fine art. For most of her life she wandered the landscapes of the western United States, but moved from Colorado to Maine in 2017. Sherrie’s linocuts have been presented in national and international exhibitions, including the Woodson Art Museum’s prestigious Birds in Art, and the Society of Animal Artists’ Art & the Animal, and are represented in corporate and museum collections. Currently several of her pieces are on loan to the US Embassy at Baku, Azerbaijan, as part of the State Department’s Art in Embassies program. She has been an invited artist on projects of the international Artists for Nature Foundation.

Sean Murtha has drawn since he could hold a pencil and been a birder since he got his first binoculars as a young teen. With a degree in Fine Art from Pratt Institute, he found employment at the American Museum of Natural History where he learned the art of diorama background painting, a skill he has continued to employ at various museums to this day. In his personal work, Sean paints birds and the landscapes they are found in, working in watercolor and oil, putting great importance in sketching and painting directly from nature. He lives in Norwalk, CT with his wife, a folk musician and teacher, and they have two sons, one an artist, the other a naturalist.

Kelly Leahy Radding honors the natural world she loves through her art. She finds all aspects of nature interesting subjects for her paintings; from large fauna to wild flora. Surrounded by woods on her Connecticut farm, she paints her subjects in dry brush watercolor, gouache, casein and egg tempera. Kelly has been a graphic designer/illustrator since 1982, receiving a Certificate of Botanical Art & Illustration at the New York Botanical Garden in 2002. She is a sought-after guest instructor, traveling to teach workshops in both the US and abroad, including the New York Botanical Garden and Florence, Italy. She has cofounded an online school, the Contemporary Naturalism Guild of Art. Kelly maintains membership in art societies that include: the American Society of Botanical Artists and the Society of Animal Artists. Her work has been juried into many international exhibitions; including the Society of Animal Artists Annual exhibitions and Birds in Art.

The natural world inspired Jim Rataczak to start painting and drawing from about age three, and has been the guiding force of his life ever since. Growing up in Minnesota, where he still lives, both the science and the art of nature were central to his development. He earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in biology and animal behavior, and a short, patchwork career as a biologist followed. But the beauty of wild things and places couldn’t be avoided, and the need to respond to it in paint ultimately proved too strong. He’s now been a professional artist for three decades, and his studio work is deeply informed by the connections with nature he forms through his field work. He considers his shelves full of sketchbooks and paint studies to be his true artistic legacy.

Barry Van Dusen