Artborne Magazine June 2017 | Page 22

the narrative he was creating. Already thinking about life and death with the use of skulls in the paintings, his addition of the endangered bees made the work reminiscent of an Albert Einstein quote: “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.” The importance of bees has been a hot topic of discussion with the recent decline in the bee population. Many have claimed that, like Einstein said, without bees to pollinate our crops, we will not be able to grow a suffi cient amount of food. Multiple factors have led to the deterioration in the bee population, in- cluding pesticides, habitat destruction, and colony collapse dis- order—the phenomenon where the worker bees leave the hive and the queen bee is left to fend for herself. Bees exist in a large community, working together to create a successful hive. Once the worker bees leave, the hive can no longer exist. There are similarities between the art community and the colony of bees and their hives. The artists, like the queen bee, cannot properly function without the community. In his most recent series, Pollinators, Nicholas Boyd expands his investigation beyond just bees. Wasps, snakes, bats, and birds all make appearances in these latest works. After about a month of mentally creating the concept for a painting, Boyd went into research mode, not only to fi nd visual references for his paintings, but to also ensure that he was creating work that is factually correct. In order to create his successful paintings, he spends hours researching the topic of pollination and each animal that he paints. What the animals eat, where they live, which plants they pollinate, and how they interact with other animals are all questions he asks before he considers the color palette and composition. Boyd then completes one fi nal step before he begins to paint. Because he works with a broad range of color, he takes time to pre-mix every hue used. “I’ll make the middle hue fi rst. Then I shift everything to white and shift everything to Payne’s grey or dark black. To me, it just makes sense” he says of this process. By using heavy-bodied acrylics and a retarding agent, he is able to keep his acrylic paint wet during the process. “Before retarding agents came to be, no one was able to paint this way. It is fortunate that we live in this time.” Some of the painters that Boyd looks to for inspiration did not have this luxury of material versatility. Rembrandt and Caravaggio are two classic painters that Boyd references in his work. His painting To Bee Dead V draws di- rect inspiration from Rembrandt. “Rembrandt would put his fi gures in a large black hat and it would create a shadow and contrast. I was playing around with that idea. I would love to go and focus more on Rembrandt and Caravaggio, I just do not have the luxury to study their art in person.” Boyd admits. Be- cause of online resources, we now have access to more art than ever before, and without looking at work through the internet, he may not have been inspired to create art again. Still, he also recognizes the importance of viewing art in person. Locally, Boyd has shown his work at multiple locations includ- ing Redefi ne Art Gallery, The Gallery at Avalon Island, City 21 www. ARTBORNEMAGAZINE.com