Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/433799
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 2 2 8 his grandpa in the longleaf pine country of east Texas. Can't keep a Louisianan out of the mud, though, so it wasn't long before he was bogging chilly marshes after ducks and geese. Forty-odd years later, you can still see his love for wild wings in his watercolors and oils. The blood runs deep. Smith's daddy was a commercial illustrator and made good money at it. He dabbled in oils and made bronze miniatures of horses and bullfighters in his spare time. Brett went off for a formal arts education but quit once he realized it was about form and technique but not about what he needed to know to make a living as an artist. He went to New York, found a couple of agents to represent him and spent the next five years as a commercial illustrator, producing art for the advertising trade. "It was a high-stress job, even though I was able to move back to Louisiana and submit my work by overnight air courier. There were deadlines, more deadlines, and cranky art directors who just might tear up my work and make me do it over." But it taught him professional discipline, right? "Yes, but I am fifty-eight now and tired of being disciplined. But it did teach me to work quickly. I learned not to languish months over a painting. I can languish over them once I'm done." Duck Stamp Contest and was also named DU's Artist of the Year in 2005 and again in 2014 with Tranquil Waters, which depicts a trio of wood ducks. "That painting actually came from a pond on our homestead," Storm says. "I spend a lot of time out there taking photographs, especially in the spring. We had some cool morning sun coming through, which created the glow reflecting off the ducks." Storm clearly has a passion for waterfowl, even mentoring young hunters by coordinating an annual waterfowl hunting trip to North Dakota but he also paints other gamebirds, plus deer, elk, wolves, and bear, even a tiger or two. His secret for success? "You have to be good," he muses, "not only good but consistently good. You have to build a name so a client will not only want your art because it appeals to his eye, but because you painted it." W e have masters aplenty here, but Brett James Smith is the master of expectation. In almost every painting, something is about to happen. That big fish is about to jump and show itself, the rifleman has just seen the moose and the moose has just seen him, and the bird is about to flush or has just flushed and the hunter has just seen it and begun his swing and is ready to shoot and maybe miss, given the impossible snarls or the wide-eyed wonder in which Smith sometimes places his subjects. Brett James Smith grew up in New Orleans and fondly remembers his first days afield, hunting wild bobwhites with PRIMAL BY SCOTT STORM FLUSH WITH COLOR BY BRETT JAMES SMITH