In the 3+ years since I began photographing birds in earnest, I have seen so many changes, the loss of habitat being the most dramatic and devastating.
While portraying birds I like to show them with as much emotion and beauty as possible. I am reminded of the antique prints of extinct birds I saw in an exhibition once, which made my heart break. This memory, and the fragility of birds that I have witnessed, was my inspiration for taking these images and employing the delicate style of printing onto vellum and gilding with gold leaf, white gold, silver, or gesso.
Evanescence, gold leaf © Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
Rookery, gold leaf © Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
The Last Hummingbird 2, gold leaf © Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
The Last Hummingbird 17, gold leaf © Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
The Last Hummingbird 12, gold leaf © Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
The Last Mating Call 1, gold leaf © Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
Maureen grew up internationally, returning stateside to study at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she earned a BFA in Photography in 1976. Her early darkroom studies shaped her love of editing and print work. She went on to work in documentary and educational film for the US Navy, eventually finding her way back to fine art photography. Her work has won numerous awards, including her favorite—having her work shot into space as part of the British Journal of Photography’s “Portrait of Humanity in Space”, 2020.
Living in the Colorado Rocky Mountain region since 1990 has given Maureen an ever-growing fondness for the natural world, especially birds, and a passion for conservation. Her series “Allegories of Melancholy” is a years long photographic study of birds, many of whom are in crisis. In creating her gilded prints, she draws inspiration from old, intricately handmade prints of extinct birds—in the hope that we won’t have to do that with the world’s current avian population.
As an artist living and working in these trying times, she consciously seeks to portray beauty for its own sake… and maybe save the world too.
www.maureenruddyburkhart.com
@mophotoartist
Rookery 1, gold leaf © Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
The Last Mating Call 3, gold leaf © Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
The Last Rookery 1, gold leaf © Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
The Last Rookery 2, gold leaf © Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
The Last Rookery 5, gold leaf © Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
The Last Summer on Earth 4, gold leaf © Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
The Last Summer on Earth 15, gold leaf © Maureen Ruddy Burkhart