art treatise
DAVID STARBUCK and wife, Michelle,
painting the
great outdoors
47
Former computer chip sales executive
launches second career as a wildlife artist
By Amanda Lisk
were in Alaska on a fly-fishing trip, wait-ing
on shore for their ride. As the boat
to pick them up rounded the corner
and came into view, all the passengers
on board pointed at the Starbucks and
screamed, “Bear!”
A rather large grizzly was walking their way and the
only thing on Starbuck’s mind was the incredible pho-tos
he was about to get.
“Thankfully, I had just changed to a telephoto lens on
my camera,” Starbuck says. “We got on the boat and I’m
just clicking away.”
The up-close encounter and once-in-a lifetime pho-tos
taken of a real-life grizzly would later inspire a series
of paintings of bears, including a 24-by-18-inch oil of
a black bear entitled “Westerly.” Black bears, native to
North Carolina, have come in proximity to Starbuck as
well.
Starbuck has become an award-winning artist in his
second career. He is a former computer chip sales exec-utive
who turned to painting after retirement, awaken-ing
a childhood talent he never had time to pursue.
“I hadn’t painted since I was 13 years old,” he says.
“My family gave me an easel and some paints a few
Christmases back, and one night I took them out and
started painting.”
Well-known wildlife artist Duane Raver took Starbuck
under his wing after one look at his first works.
“He said, ‘So you’re telling me these are the first
paintings you’ve ever done and you haven’t painted
since you were 13?’ He said, ‘You need to pursue this,’”
Starbuck says.
And so he did, focusing on the great outdoors. A
lifelong hunter, Starbuck many times spots his sub-jects
while sitting in a tree stand for eight hours on
a Saturday. He uses his camera to capture reference
material — the lighting, the scale of the animal and the
emotion.
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