American wildlife painter Morton Solberg (b. 1935, Cleveland, Ohio) says, "As far back as I remember, all I ever wanted to be was Tarzan...or a commercial artist."
Now seven decades later, Solberg reflects on which path he took through the jungle: "I read every nature book I could get my hands on. I would go to the library with my father, who would be researching something, and take home 4 or 5 books to read. It would take me a long time to read them because I have dyslexia, but did not know it. That's why school was so tough. Nature was my outlet. Stories of grizzly bears and mountain lions, African lions and Indian tigers, and anything else that was wild and free. Strangely when I started painting it was landscapes and figurative art but I would still illustrate reports for my friends and family that were still in school with wildlife drawings."
After studying at the Cleveland Institute of Art and becoming trained as an illustrator, he joined the legion of other contemporaries in North America whose only outlet for making a living was churning out work for magazines, advertising companies and corporate clients.
His distinctive style, today called the Solberg style, still lay hidden by necessity.
"All my work to this point was done very realistically until I moved to California in 1968. I was an art director for a greeting card company so I was doing fine financially and...
Additional Article Information:
· Article is 3,488 words long (250 are displayed in this preview).
Author: Todd Wilkinson
Post Date:December 29th, 2010
'An interview with Mort Solberg and a look at a dozen works that convey what many have called "the Solberg style."
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Research tags: morten solberg, bennington center for the arts, at and the animal kingdom, greenwich workshop,
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