Author: Michelle Dryden

Now, on exhibition at D&R Greenway Land Trust’s Johnson Education Center, four award-winning artists are demonstrating the vital connection between artworks and preserving habitat.

In a meet-the-artist reception nearly two weeks ago in Princeton, Creature Comforts: Habitat Immersions Artists Patrick Bernuth, Annelies van Dommelen, Judith Hummer, and Minako Ota met their audiences and talked about what inspires them.

Their artworks about Creature Comforts: Habitat Immersions celebrate wildlife in their aquatic, forest, desert, ocean, and meadow habitats.

“I tend to paint what excites me at a particular moment,” says Hummer. “It may be the twisted intermingling of trees, or the way water cascades over rocks.”

The milkweed, honeysuckle and bluebells in Hummer’s paintings provide essential food for Monarch butterflies, bees and other pollinators.

Whether it’s the trees of autumn at sunset, or in winter at dawn, Hummer is out there painting them. She is even out there during abnormal weather patterns, such as snow in October.

Since nature has gone awry, due to human intervention, Hummer’s “Fractured Birds” artwork depicts creatures that have lost their habitat.

But, “through preservation of more than 20, 500 acres in central New Jersey, D&R Greenway has been at the forefront of protecting wildlife habitat for three decades,” says Director of Land Stewardship Tina Notas.

For example, “the vast contiguous grasslands at St. Michaels Farm Preserve provide excellent opportunities to create and enhance habitat for grassland bird populations such as bobolinks, sparrows, and American Kestrels,” she states.

There’s so much to learn about the natural world through D&R Greenway exhibits. And with Climate Change being a factor in our world, the artists’ works suggest the importance of saving nature.

Therefore, the international artist Ota finds creature comforts in cats as connoisseurs of comfort that live in harmony with plants, birds and amphibians, as well as hummingbirds and butterflies, feeding on irises and tulips.

Ota is Japanese who has been a painter in the U.S. for 20 years where she combines the techniques of the East and West in her paintings and multimedia work.

Meanwhile, Bernuth works in acrylic on stone to create a glossy ibis, a great blue heron, a bald eagle, and a barn owl, even a Pumpkinseed – a spotted fish found in the Carnegie Lake.

This lifelong angler and outdoorsman took up painting in order to spend more time in nature. At first, he painted on the natural surfaces surrounding him, such as stone.

“The colors and forms of the landscape and its inhabitants are forever changing,” he says. “I try to capture the emotions and the perceptions that are not revealed in photographs or journals.”

The fourth award-winning artist van Dommelen shows us human figures whose habitats appear to be endangered, and are surrounded by architectural ruins, but are holding tight to what remains.

Her artwork serves as a reminder that after human destruction, nature will return and take it all back.

For her painting is a journey of discovery. “The human condition, nature and bestial imagery are part of my thoughts,” she says.

These artists’ works provide a profit to D&R Greenway’s work to preserve and care for land.

The variety of art present diversity in the exhibits “from splashes of vibrant violet to shimmers of shining gold leaf, the techniques in this exhibit provide artistic habitats for the magnificent birds, fish, butterflies, bees, and even cats within their frames,” says Curator Diana Moore.

“The exhibit as a whole celebrates the exciting creatures that delight us and warns us to preserve the habitats that sustain them,” she states.

This current exhibit lasts only two more days. For availability of gallery hours, call 609-924-4646, or visit www.drgreenway.org.