Nature’s Canvas Robert Bateman And Carl Brenders, Two Of The World’s Best-Known Wildlife Artists, Share Spokane’s Limelight

At the risk of overstating the case, Bateman and Brenders are like the Beethoven and Brahms of wildlife art.

Robert Bateman of British Columbia is probably the best-known wildlife artist in the world, and Carl Brenders of Belgium is a close runner-up.

Bateman and Brenders will have their first ever joint appearance at Spokane’s Pacific Flyway Gallery on Sunday, signing prints, posters and books. For wildlife art lovers, it’s an event almost on the scale of the Eagles Reunion Tour, if the eagles (and wolves and polar bears) were strictly the kind portrayed in the artists’ limited-edition prints.

Bateman rearranged his busy schedule for the chance to spend some time with his good friend Brenders.

“I’m absolutely pleased as punch, because I’m a great admirer of Carl’s work ever since I first saw it,” said Bateman, 66. “And I think he’s getting better every year.”

Both men are in the enviable position of combining their two passions - art and nature - into one career.

Brenders, 59, was a successful commercial artist in Belgium until a 1983 exhibition in Jackson Hole, Wyo., established him as a peerless painter of North American wildlife. He’s published one book, “Wildlife: The Nature Paintings of Carl Brenders.”

Bateman, a native of Toronto, studied biology and art in college, and worked for years as a teacher of geography and art. He began as an abstract painter and became an international sensation in the 1970s when he turned toward realism and wildlife. His work has been the subject of four books and several films.

Bateman, Brenders and their wives became fast friends this spring when they were invited by the French national parks system for an art-inthe-field project in the French Alps.

“It was really wonderful to strap your easel on your back and tuck your paints under your arm and head out on these little mountain trails, not knowing what painting you’re going to bring back at the end of the day,” said Bateman. “And then we’d go into this little inn where we were staying and have these hearty meals every night, and talk about the environment and nature and art.”

These two painters found themselves intrigued by the human imprint on the Alps. Bateman said they spent many of their days together exploring an abandoned Alpine settlement, hacked out of the forest and mountainside by 17th century settlers. “The human heritage aspect, that’s what we concentrated on,” said Bateman.

Generally, Bateman does his painting not on a French mountainside, but in an oceanside home on Saltspring Island, just off Vancouver Island. In 1995, he spent most of the year holed up there working hard on his most recent book, “Robert Bateman’s Natural Worlds.”

“I started to think, golly, this could be my last book, because the books come out every five or six years, and that means the next book would be in the 21st century, and I’d be in my 70s,” said Bateman. “And I had about 100 ideas that I wanted to get out of my system, and I’d been waiting for years for an excuse to do them.”

He finished those paintings up last year, and this year he embarked on a traveling binge. He went on safari in East Africa, on an adventure trip to the extreme northeast corner of India and traveled extensively through Europe. Throughout his life he has lived on three continents (North America, Europe and Africa) and visited all of the rest.

“I’ve been every place that I’ve really wanted to go,” said Bateman. “I haven’t been to Russia, and actually it’s not on my short list, because they have desecrated the environment and I don’t like the Communist style of architecture.”

However, he would like to return to some of his favorite places: Costa Rica, Antarctica and - the place he is most drawn to - East Africa (he has done numerous paintings of East African wildlife).

Oddly, the area closest to home is one he feels he has not sufficiently explored.

“I haven’t done justice to the Canadian Arctic,” he said. “I haven’t even done justice to British Columbia and Washington state. I should just jump in my car and do some exploring in Eastern Washington. I would like to have less demands on my calendar. 1997 is fully booked, and 1998 is getting there.”

In all of his travels and all of his shows and exhibitions, he hears one comment over and over again: “It’s almost like a photo!”

“When people say that, I kind of give them a penetrating look and try to get to know a little bit more about them,” said Bateman. “Because it’s either intended as a compliment or an insult. It’s not neutral. I’d say 90 percent mean it as a compliment.”

To Bateman, however, it isn’t necessarily one. He began as an abstract painter, and he still composes his paintings like abstract designs. Get him to talk about one of his paintings and he’s far more likely to talk about diagonal swaths, balance and lines, as opposed to feathers and fur.

“My paintings are put together in a way that the camera can’t do,” he said. “Although I use photos for reference, you couldn’t possibly take a picture like my paintings. I hope, and maybe I’m flattering myself, that they are better than photography. The most obvious reason is I can move things around. I can put a clump of twigs in front of some wolves. I orchestrate a painting the way a composer would orchestrate his piano concerto.”

Yet on the other hand, the naturalist in him craves the intense realism. “I especially love examining the particularities of nature and putting them down in paint,” said Bateman. “Just blobs of paint don’t do it for me.”

Brenders echoes that sentiment in the foreword to his book.

“For me, it is not crazy to paint all those little rocks and fallen pine needles, because the vibration of the textures makes an aesthetic whole of the animal, the plant life and the landscape in the painting,” wrote Brenders. “For me, it would be a shame and a lack of respect to all this beauty not to paint it realistically.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 4 Photos (2 color)

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: JOINT APPEARANCE Robert Bateman and Carl Brenders will be signing books, prints and posters on Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Pacific Flyway Gallery, 401 W. Riverside, Spokane.