Paintings: Wildlife Maps

"Map Paintings" by Paul Morstad

Paintings on maps inspired by the natural sciences and wildlife artists such as John James Audubon and James Fenwick Lansdowne.

The dendritic process that leads me from one painting to the next is mostly inspired by the old charts and abandoned objects I come across as well as the challenges I encounter in the act of painting a given piece. This process allows me a broader exploration of the themes of migration, encroachment, ecological decay and extirpation. I am interested in the obfuscating of the map or chart, in the visual reciprocity and tension at play between the zoological images emerging from the map and the map itself, and ultimately in arriving at a form of interspecies counter-mapping.