The muse is wild
Jerry Wilda didn't start out with Idaho Fish & Game as an illustrator; it just worked out that way
WHAT: Valley Art Center July Art Show and Sale Opening
WHEN: Reception, 5-7 p.m. today; exhibit runs through July 28
WHERE: Valley Art Center, 842 Sixth St., Clarkston
COST: Free
CLARKSTON - When artist Jerry Wilda of Nampa sits before a blank canvas, he knows it will eventually contain an image of some sort of wildlife.
"It's a waste of a panel if you paint a picture and there's not a bird or an animal in it," Wilda, 76, said Tuesday at Clarkston's Valley Art Center, where he was attaching wires to his paintings so they could be hung on the center's walls for an exhibit that opens this afternoon. The show will include about 40 of Wilda's paintings.
The former Lewiston resident and Idaho Department of Fish and Game illustrator was born and raised just west of Boise. He began illustrating for Fish and Game in 1953.
Yet, Wilda was never an "official" illustrator for Fish and Game - his primary job was to fly in airplanes to assist with big game censuses. He was involved in the re-introduction of desert bighorn sheep in Idaho in 1961.
"I was not salaried (as an illustrator). But when they had something that needed to be done, I did it."
Wilda's paintings in the Valley Art Center show include ducks, bighorn sheep, deer, elk, pheasants, hawks, cougars, grizzlies and moose.
Wilda doesn't hunt much anymore, preferring instead to "shoot" animals with a digital camera and then paint them, but he said he has bagged every type of bird and animal legal to hunt in Idaho except a moose.
"I used to think the reason God put me on Earth was to control the duck and geese population," he said.
"As I was growing up, every pen and pencil was put to good use," Wilda wrote in comments for the exhibition. "My choice of canvas included every scrap of paper and paste-board box I could find, but I was also known to draw on most any flat surface, including the living room wall, which my mother severely punished me for. However, many years later she paid me to paint a mural on the same wall."
Wilda studied art at Northwest Nazarene College in Nampa, now Northwest Nazarene University.
"After years and years of being in nature and observing wildlife in their natural habitat, I have developed a photographic eye for the musculature, stance and even the wing beat of the birds and other animals I have studied," Wilda said.
Wilda's work has been featured in various Fish and Game magazines, booklets and pamphlets, including the complete series of waterfowl species of Idaho. Many of Wilda's works have been used in biology classes of the Idaho school system for identification purposes as well as the publication "Animal and Fish Life of Idaho."
In the 1970s, Wilda's work appeared on Idaho's Hunting and Fishing Regulations booklets. Copies of four of the original works are available for purchase.
Wilda's illustrations also have been featured in Idaho Wildlife Review and Incredible Idaho, a magazine published by the Idaho Department of Tourism. In the early 1980s, his work appeared in Colorado Outdoors Magazine.
Most recently, Wilda's artwork has been used by the Colorado Fish and Game Department, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Mule Deer Foundation.
The opening reception for the show is 5-7 p.m. today, in conjunction with Clarkston's Alive After Five event. The exhibit will continue through July 28.
Valley Art Center's hours are 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, noon-6 p.m. Friday, and 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday.
Solan can reached at (208) 882-5561 ext. 235 or asolan@inland360.com.
