Read this Wildlife Art Journal article

by Todd Wilkinson

Nature versus nurture:  How much of an artist's instinct is inherited, passed down generationally at the mitochondrial level?  How much is learned or owed to environment?  How much involves libertating oneself from the shadow of very talented ancestors?

Consider Russell Chatham and one Gottardo Fidele Ponziano Piazzoni.

Comparing photographs of Chatham to his celebrated grandfather, there is an undeniable physical resemblance.  In their youths and on into respective autumnal years, each possesses a similar bodily posture.  When shown scooched next to their surfaces—a look of knowing intensity in the faces—the orthopedic language appears to suggest they are attempting to climb into the scenes before them.

Yes, it is their art where transmuted spirit resides.

The great painter Gottardo Piazzoni working on a mural (photo by Ansel Adams);  Piazzoni's grandson, Russell Chatham, at work in his Montana studio.



People across the country are talking about Russell Chatham again. In the spring of 2011, a newspaper story appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle claiming that Chatham had fallen upon hard times, that he picked up and left Montana bound for a studio on Tomales Bay in northern California.  Rampant speculation ensued.  Voyeurs wanted to know why? Had he quit the Big Sky state for good?

Those who know Chatham say the American painter, who helped usher forth the new era of modern Western regionalism—place-based impressionism absent the cliches of cowboys— had gone home to re-ground himself.  Rumors of his...