The letter W meant only one thing to veteran wildlife painter Joe Ferrante: wolf. How the animal and the letter would congeal into a public image for the Alphabet Project was a much more difficult mental hike. The avid outdoorsman and avid painter has proven time after time that there isn't anything in nature he can't render in breathtaking art form, so how should he approach this challenge?
He was especially motivated to do something eye-popping because the Alphabet Project was an artistic celebration by the Prince George Citizen for its centennial. Ferrante worked at the Citizen, largely as an artist (graphic design and layout), for decades until his recent retirement. He immensely loved the city and the region because it provided him with endless outdoor adventures and artistic license ever since he settled here. The W would be, in part, an homage to his chosen home.
"That's when your imagination goes to work. I wasn't quite sure what to do for quite a while," said Ferrante. He kept up his usual course of outdoor activities and family functions to draw his mind around visual decisions. "We do a lot of camping, fishing, being out in the forest. We go all over the place in the camper, with our boat. That's how we spend most of our summers. This is paradise. For us, it's heaven."
He and his wife Irene both come originally from Malta, part of a chain of islands located in the Mediterranean Sea just south of Italy. Back in Europe, Ferrante attended Oxford University, he and a partner had an art gallery, but his sister in Canada kept raving about the great green north and he couldn't resist. First, the Lower Mainland was the destination in 1974 where he spent about six years doing graphic design jobs and working in print shops.
But a camping trip to Prince George in 1981 figuratively never ended. He and Irene loved the place. On a whim, he applied for a job at the Citizen during that campout. He got an acceptance call almost immediately, became a resident within a week, and they never looked back.
He and Irene have lived in the same house and acreage on Old Summit Lake Road for the past 35 years. It's where they raised their family, based their outdoor excursions near and far, and it is where Ferrante has a couple of spaces (he migrates about the house and yard as he paints, he admitted, based on his mood of the moment) for painting his acclaimed works of art.
"I do it most in the winters or when it's raining," he said. "When the weather is nice it doesn't make sense to be inside. There is always something to do."
He has to keep his paintbrush moving because almost nothing he paints sits around on the shelf for long. His paintings are sold almost as fast as they are finished, and most of it sells via his personal website.
"I used to do abstracts, too. In my younger days I'd do work like Salvador Dali, and those would sell, too. But I find realism to be a real discipline. It's not about one is better. People have different tastes and no one should knock anyone's taste in art. That is what art is for - different things to different people."
He studies the styles and details of wildlife masters like Robert Bateman, Daniel Smith and Carl Brenders. Over the years he has attained his own reputation as a primo painter of natural realism. Twice he has been chosen for the national Ducks Unlimited arts portfolio program. Twice he has been named the Ducks Unlimited artist of the year for British Columbia. The B.C. Guide-Outfitter Association named him their artist of the year two times, and the B.C. Wildlife Federation has placed him on their annual Top 3 list five times. He was chosen to paint both a bear and eagle for the B.C. Easter Seals charitable auction program.
From these successes and exploits came his idea for the Alphabet Project creation. He took one of his past paintings of wolves from these award-winning endeavors, adapted it, and sliced the letter W to fit the needs of this project. Look closely at it and it is a study in impressive tiny details; stand back 10 feet and the overall impression jumps off the wall and holds the viewers' attention. It's like they might bolt out of sight if you make any sudden moves.
The image is not a snapshot of an actual encounter with the impressive beasts out on his many field trips. Ferrante shoots numerous photos and conducts other research to get each touch of colour just right in his paintings, but the end image is often an amalgamation of pictures, impressions and imagination. Such is the case with the wolves of W.
"There is nothing wrong with using a photo directly, but it's not ideal as your only source material," he said. "A photo is flat. The light isn't exactly the way it was in nature, the colours your eye can detect are much more detailed than what a camera can get, the perspectives are not quite right in a photo. You have to put more into it than copy a photo."
In his case, he puts decades of training and experience into it, as well as that other W word: work.
Flip through the below slideshow to view the Alphabet Project art and a link to each artist story:
