For most of humanity, daily life is cursed with thoughts only of survival. Billions awake and go to work not doing what they love most, but feeling forced to toil, in sacrifice of other things, to bring home a paycheck or even to gather a sip of water.

When your work becomes your passion and vice versa, you can never imagine what it is like to do anything else.  Still, it is difficult to translate the sensation to those who have not taken the blind leap of faith or who do not have the luxury of drinking from that well.

This is why I bring to you an anecdote about Hans Kleiber.  With the notable exception of our indigenous peoples in North America, this is a continent of immigrants with tendrils of ancestry tethered to every corner of the world.  Our diversity, contrary to the thoughts of the isolationists and the anti-internationalists, is what gives this land its human richness.

Kleiber came to the U.S. as a German immigrant and his European affinity for the forest put him in the employ of the U.S. Forest Service as a woodsman assigned to help manage the vast public treescapes of the West.  Kleiber also was wired as an artist and he is best known for his etchings (also known as intaglios and hand-pulled lithography).  He knew he had a reputation as an etcher to uphold. 

Give the people what they want, so the expression goes.

But privately, he fancied himself as a painter in oils and watercolors.  He admired the masters.  This is what set him free.  When he wasn't working in a forestry uniform, or transferring drawings onto copper plates to make a living, he painted.  In our story on Kleiber at Wildlife Art Journal , we share the tale of Kleiber's double-sided canvasses and give you a look at the duality of one work. 

You will see Untitled Landscape which he offered to certain viewers and, on the other side, an untitled nude for a perhaps different but appreciative audience.  Kleiber recognized the importance of painting the figure in his evolution as an artist and yes, frankly, it gave him joy. 

His wife did not cotton to the necessity of Hans inviting other women to pose naked for him in his studio;  still, it happened though not as a deception but out of Kleiber's need, in this one short life, to seek the fullness of artistic expression, including taking the broadest view possible of aesthetics.  His love of nature;  his need to work;  and the force of personal expresson were united as one.  This is why he is remembered.

Every little ville, every county, every province on this planet is filled with Hans Kleibers. You either know one or you are one yourself.  We salute you.

Along with enjoying the view of Kleiber's double-sided canvas, we hope you will read the story on wild bird painters of the Netherlands, curated by environmental journalist and birder Willem H. Smith, who founded Oog voor Natuur Gallery in Holland.  I feel a kindredness with Willem;  for him, too, there is no separation between work and pleasure.

Also well worth the time, if you dare, is reading the essay from Canadian artist, curator, and university professor Cliff Eyland titled Wildlife Art's Lingering Inferiority Complex that, in the spirit of Kleiber, challenges nature artists to be more and do more with their art.  His message:  Let each artist put his or her original signature on their work, whether it is an illustration for a book of natural history, a piece of experimental sculpture, a scene interpreted through a camera viewfinder, or the easel painting that, in 2109, will say something about your life in 2009. 

Obviously, the greatest satisfaction emanates from doing the hard work with things we love. 

The premise that artists do what they do because they cannot imagine doing anything else is not a statement of limitation or eccentricity;  it is embracing freedom to be oneself instead of always chasing the market. That's the most resonant kind of artistic expression there is.