Wildlife artist and photographer Marie Rust is a life-long Michigan resident whose love of nature began as a child. Time spent on the shores of Whitmore Lake taught her how to be still and observe the natural world. “I would spend hours by the lake, watching the water and sky, the play of light on the waves, feeling the wind, and I watched the birds and other critters who utilized the lake and our property.”

Over the years she developed a deep connection to natural rhythms and to the lives that share our world. “I was blessed to have this space to grow up in. Our property, unlike so many places crammed along a lake shore, was spacious and bordered by some empty lots. There were mature oaks and willows and we had tons of birds around, orioles and kingfishers, ducks and geese, even a pileated woodpecker, an uncommon sight back in the 1970s. My mom even saw a bobcat on the hill above the lake. It felt like a tiny wilderness.”

In 8th grade she began drawing graphite portraits of wildlife. An only child of two working parents, she had a lot of time alone and she spent this time creating connections to her subjects. Her first drawings were of big cats and wolves, subjects that make meaningful eye contact. “I look back now and can see how I had a need to have some company. I had known since I was eight that I was gay, and I spent much of my adolescence terrified that people would find out. Creating these animals that looked at me, saw me, was a way for me to feel known. But there was also some of me in each of them, so those were also my eyes, looking out at the world, seeing.”

Marie was discouraged (although by whom she does not now recall) from pursuing a career as an artist, being told artists could not make a living with their art. She also decided art school was not for her. “I had a pretty good idea how my love of wildlife would be viewed at art school, and since it couldn’t be a career choice anyway, I didn’t push it. I kept drawing for myself and gave the work to friends and family and it stayed a hobby for 25 years.”

A layoff in 2004 made her take another look at her art. While she had attended Eastern Michigan University she never graduated, and the photography industry she had spent 10 years in (she worked at and managed a department in a custom photo lab) had changed seemingly overnight with the advent of digital technology. “Sometimes life takes you and shoves you towards what you should be doing. The layoff was devastating but it also forced me to seriously consider building a career as an artist. I would never have quit my job to be a full-time artist but in the end it’s been the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.

“I had been going to the Ann Arbor art fairs for years, and I thought I was familiar with how they worked and that they were all that busy. I also had inflated expectations of how selling my work would go. I was certain I’d see instant success, but the reality was quite different. I attended my first show in 2005 and had only $156 in sales—and this was after investing my 401k in the business. That was a rude awakening! But I was still creating works of wildlife in graphite, and a common thread that ran through all customer comments was that my work was great but it needed color. When your customers are telling you what they want, you better listen!”

Having not gone to art school and never worked with anything but graphite, Marie was now faced with having to figure out how to incorporate color in her art. She tried adding colored pencil to graphite, selectively coloring elements of the piece. “I liked the result but it seemed a bit flat. So then I played around with pastels, acrylic paints, even crayons. But those media didn’t satisfy my somewhat compulsive need for fine detail.” Then a friend leant her a book about watercolor and pen and ink technique. “I opened that book and it was like a revelation. I looked at the ink work and said ‘yes, this is it!’ I didn’t know anything about watercolor but didn’t see why I couldn’t incorporate colored pencil with the ink.”

With these new tools Marie began looking for colorful subjects, and birds were of course the most logical choice. She had been a casual bird watcher her whole life, a joy imparted on her by her great-grandmother Mary. In addition, one of her favorite books as a child was the Golden Guide to Birds of North America, a field guide illustrated by Arthur Singer, one of the 20th Century’s best wildlife artists.

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“There’s no doubt that the illustrative style presented in the bird guide influenced my own style. I’ve never been big on backgrounds, finding them distracting and often obtrusive if not done well. Plus, I love portraiture, love making art that creates an immediacy, an intimacy, with my subjects. I have only recently been creating more full-bodied renditions that require foreground or background, and even then I try to keep it to a minimum with pen work and little color, allowing the subject to stand out.”

Her unique style happened as something of an accident. “My girlfriend asked me to draw a portrait of her childhood dog, a cockapoo, as a gift for her mother. I looked at all that hair and thought ‘Ugh.’ I decided to do a more representational, rather than realistic, depiction of his fur, drawing it as squiggly, overlapping triangles. I wasn’t sure I liked it, but it laid the groundwork for how I depicted my birds. I didn’t want to draw fluffy mammal-looking things with wings and had no desire to create photo-realistic art—I would just sell the photos I use for my reference instead and save myself the trouble! So, I played with the feathers, exaggerating the shapes and creating the illusion of depth and texture by making the overlapped areas fall away using black ink.” When she went back to drawing mammals she brought the technique with her, harkening back to Charlie the cockapoo and building shapes to represent fur. “They all look like they’re wet, but I love the textures.”

Now, after 16 years on the art fair circuit and a nice collection of award ribbons on her wall, Marie has no intention of slowing down. “I love what I do. I still crave that connection to my subjects. I work from my own photography, so I get to spend a lot of time in the field, studying and photographing. I have been all over the country doing art fairs, and have talked to so many people, sharing stories about our natural world. I do what I can to educate people and to encourage them to become conservers of nature. I’ve become a ‘birder,’ one of those crazy people that keeps lists and chases rare birds. I also do volunteer work when I can, participating in bird surveys and doing work to restore habitat.

“Ultimately, it’s all about connection—between me and my subjects, between my work and those who view it, between the images I create and the very real, tangible, sentient lives that I draw my inspiration from. I will continue to celebrate them and their lives with my art as long as I can hold a pen.”

Marie Rust October Artist