JACKSON, Wyo. — Kathryn Turner, a Jackson Hole native and local fine art painter, has been selected as the featured artist for the 2024 Wildlife Arts Festival in Thomasville, Georgia.
In its 29th year, the Wildlife Arts Festival runs from Nov. 7 to 17 and is one of the country’s top wildlife art exhibitions. It brings together 3,400 guests, artists and volunteers and will showcase a collection of 20 of Turner’s works from her time in the Red Hills of Georgia this past April after she was selected.
Turner, who was born as the fourth generation in Jackson Hole and raised on the Triangle X Ranch in Grand Teton National Park, credits the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem as the reason she originally became an artist.
“Art became my way of expressing my love for this place,” Turner tells Buckrail.
According to Turner, the Red Hills of Georgia are a place similar to Jackson in that it is deeply connected to landscape, ecosystem and conservation. She emphasizes that in both Jackson Hole and the Red Hills area, there are shared values and shared love expressed through the arts.
There are also shared species; Turner notes foxes and their resiliency are a a subject matter found in both places, as are birds that migrate between the two places seasonally.
Turner also discovered some differences. The Red Hills sit close to sea level and have a flatter, more intimate landscape with trees that create a shorter depth of field. Turner also says the sense of atmosphere differs. In Jackson Hole, Turner sees things as very sharp and crisp with a clarity that needs to be translated on the canvas; in the Red Hills, the higher humidity creates softer edges and softer light.
Turner tells Buckrail it was a humbling experience to go to a landscape she had never been to before and had to learn to understand.
“Nature is really important in how it can humble us and remind us how little we know, and how much there is to discover,” Turner says of returning to Jackson Hole after this experience.
After the Festival, Turner will spend the winter in Jackson Hole and start work for an exhibition at the Brinton Museum in Big Horn, Wyoming. Turner anticipates that project will take the next six months, after the show has been in the works for the past three years.
