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WALTON FORD:​​[br]I started out just painting these things

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that looked like Audubons.

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They were like fake Audubons,

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but I twisted the subject matter a bit,

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and got inside his head and tried to paint it

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as if it was really his tortured soul,

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as if his hand betrayed him and he painted

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what he didn't want to expose about himself.

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So I did start doing those

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and it was very important to me then

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to make them look like Audubons,

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to make them look like they [br]were a hundred years old,

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to make them look like he painted them,

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but that they escaped out [br]of him without, you know,

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almost like a picture Dorian Gray, but you know,

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a natural history image.

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The whole print project seemed [br]like the natural fruition

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of all the other stuff that I do.

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Look at that.

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<v Peter>Yeah, it's good.</v>

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<v ->Beautious.</v>

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All the folios of natural history prints

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started out as watercolors that were done

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in the field or done from nature,

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and they ended up as prints

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that were bound and sold by subscription,

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and it makes sense to make them the way

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that Peter and I make them.

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<v ->We've been working on these [br]prints for over five years,

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and the idea of doing the prints in this size

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was that we wanted as much as possible

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to mimic the Audubon Double [br]Folio Birds of America book.

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And we wanted to work in [br]some of those same techniques

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that Audubon would've used to make those prints.

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All of our prints are done [br]with six or seven plates,

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and separate colors on every plate

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and probably much more saturated color

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than Audubon would've ever used.

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(gears creaking)

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That's a part, I think, of [br]Walton's way of picking up

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what Audubon did, but also changing it

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and distorting it a little bit,

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kinda turning up the irony a little bit. (laughs)

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<v Walton>Wow.</v>

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<v ->That was good.</v>

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<v ->Yeah, that's juicy!</v>

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Psychedelic.

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This looks cool.

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The registration looks pretty good.

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<v ->That's good.</v>

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Yeah, that's encouraging 'cause

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we're starting to get the feel of it, I think.

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<v ->It's a pretty nice print, [br]like generally just for.

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<v Peter>That blue is really</v>

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more intense, isn't it?

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Yeah, it's nice.

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(Peter laughing)[br]Dig it!

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I like it.

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Yeah, it's in.

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When I was a kid I loved to draw.

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And I was a little kind of amateur naturalist,

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identifying birds and catching [br]snakes and keeping weird pets.

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This museum was like heaven to me.

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I think that the dioramas here are works of art.

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For an artist it was really great [br]that those animals didn't move.

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I could look at them in a way that [br]you can't look at animals in the zoo

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or animals on nature shows.

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I could really see how they were put together.

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Passenger pigeons were the most numerous bird on the planet Earth.

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A single flock could have 2 billion birds in it.

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There were such huge numbers of these birds

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that it was frightening.

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When they land in forests,

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they break great trees in half.

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And the crap would fall like snow the whole time.

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And it was thought that they were inexhaustible,

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so they were hunted like mad.

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This is a series of photographs

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that was taken in 1898.

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I like doing these little research trips.

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It’s like play-acting for me [br]to pretend to be one of these

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English natural history guys that [br]are both heroes and villains.

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There's an image in here

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of a full grown male passenger pigeon

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very beautifully posed, very proud bird.

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I think it sort of foretells disaster.

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It looks like because it's under lit,

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it's already a ghost or a monster or somehow

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There's some dark, dark undercurrent

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to this photo that's very beautiful.

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There's many insane kind of like narratives

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that have to do with the passenger pigeon.

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They were so numerous that

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everyone who saw them was sort of blown away by them.

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And I have some quotes that I ended up

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putting on a painting.

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Here they are.

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This is one of the earliest descriptions from 1637.

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"Millions of turtle doves on green bows,

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"which sat pecking of the full right pleasant crepes

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"that were supported by the lusty trees,

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"whose fruitful load did cause the arms to bend."

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The big thing I’m always looking for in my work

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is a sort of attraction-repulsion,

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where the stuff is beautiful [br]to begin with until you notice

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that some sort of horrible [br]violence is about to happen

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or is in the middle of happening.

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The original impulse is to make a sort of like,

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nasty little underground [br]cartoon on a really large scale.

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I had a lot of fun sort of making these vignettes.

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They’re satisfying all their lusts

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and all their cravings and all their crazy desires

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like as they are going down,

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and to me there is just some [br]sort of black humor in that.

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There is like these guys - the eggs are coming out

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and as they are coming out they are being stolen.

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And then it's fun to have them void on each other

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and to have them murder each other.

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The little one is falling out of the nest.

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It’s a dark humor, but it [br]makes me chuckle when I'm doing it.

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There is this sort of Hudson River,

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kind of beautiful landscape.

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And then over here there's some indication

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of maybe previous destruction,

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branches that have broken down.

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And here come the huge flocks, you know.

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And this is the scary part,

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the sort of weather system moving in

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of these enormous flocks of birds.

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When I started doing sketches for this

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and I realized that the angle I was gonna paint it at,

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and the sort of way I was gonna paint it,

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it would almost seemed like it was just floating,

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like a sort of strange dream-like,

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slow-motion kind of falling.

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And that dream-like quality gave me all this room

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to pack it with all this narrative

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that seems to happen sort of independent of the fact

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that this thing is crashing down.

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The painting I’m working on now is uh,

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it’s a MONKEY BANQUET basically.

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And it’s part of a series that has to do with

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this mid-19th century [br]explorer, Sir Richard Burton.

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One of the stories that I was reading about him

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that stuck with me was this one about

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these monkeys he kept in his quarters

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when he was a young British officer

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and I’m gonna read a quote:

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“He gathered together forty [br]monkeys of various ages

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and species and installed them in his house

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in an attempt to compile a [br]vocabulary of monkey language.

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And one tiny one, very pretty, [br]small and silky looking monkey

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he used to call his wife.”

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I painted the wife individually,

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and I named it ‘The Forsaken.’

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She sits in a tree and she [br]looks all heartbroken and bereft

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because she’s been abandoned by her lover.

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“They all sat down on chairs at mealtimes

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and the servants waited on them

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and each had its bowl and plate with [br]the food and drink proper for them.

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He sat at the head of the table

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and the pretty little monkey sat [br]by him in a baby’s high chair.”

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That’s just too good.

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"He had a list of about 60 words

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"before the experiment was concluded."

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And to me this, this is just what I’m looking for

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when I’m doing all this reading.

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I do a lot of research and this [br]thing has almost everything in it.

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There’s an erotic kind of fascination to it.

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There’s something that strikes me as humorous

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in a quintessentially super-eccentric British way.

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When these paintings leave my studio,

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a lot of times I don't ever get to see 'em again.

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I painted this picture about two years ago,

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and I was happy that I still liked it

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'cause a lot of times you come back to

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work you did a while ago and can't bear it.

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The drawing I did first is of this elephant,

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this glorious elephant.

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And then I divided it in [br]a sort of Mondrian fashion

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into all these different -

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into a very, what I thought an elegant, [br]abstract composition of rectangles.

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And in each rectangle I decided what to do.

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The idea of dividing it up [br]into bits had to do with

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the parable about the blind man and the elephant,

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where each blind man grabs a hold [br]of a different part of the elephant,

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and the one that grabs the tusk says, well,

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I know what an elephant is:

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he’s smooth, hard, kind of like polished wood.

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And then one grabs the leg [br]and says, no, no, no, it’s…

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an elephant is like a tree, [br]it’s like a tree trunk.

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And the tail, the guy says, [br]well, it’s like a paintbrush.

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And the guy who has the [br]nose says it’s like a snake.

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So I had this idea of having the [br]elephant divided up into bits

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that wouldn’t identify it as [br]an elephant all by itself,

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and have each one of those [br]things framed individually.

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And then have a different species [br]of bird inhabit that little frame,

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and do his thing within it.

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And it’s like he doesn’t,

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he doesn’t see any of the other elements

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so he can’t put the whole picture together.

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It’s too vast for one person to picture.

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I wanted to make sort of the [br]largest watercolors ever.

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Ultimately that becomes fun all by itself.

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It took about nine months to paint.

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All of this makes it sound [br]like I have this great kind of

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intellectual reason for making these things,

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but ultimately I want to paint a sexy monkey,

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and I want to paint a big, huge [br]you know elephant with an erection.

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Why?

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Why do I feel the need to make these things?

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Why is it that you want to make [br]them as disturbing as you can?

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Or make them as violent and [br]out of control as you can?

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I like kind of overwrought emotion, melodrama,

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very 19th-century modes of communicating.

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I’m not a minimalist, I’m a maximalist.

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The more you throw at it the better.

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It’s a sort of a wasteland out there.

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I want to do rich things,

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I want to make rich dishes and put them out there.