The Story Behind my Entries in 'The Natural Eye 2026'

Yellow-rumped Warblers after Snow Storm. Mokuhanga by Ken Januski, copyright 2026.

Warbling Vireo, Common Yellowthroat and Wilson's Warbler at Roxborough Reservoir. Mokuhanga by Ken Januski, copyright 2026.

Cedar Waxwings in Juniper. Mokuhanga by Ken Januski, copyright 2026.

I wish I had a better,  i.e. one with a photo, link to the online gallery of 'The Natural Eye 2026' but I don't, though that may be my own fault for not figuring out how to do so! So this is the sans-photo link: https://buyart.mallgalleries.org.uk/swla-2026/. I'd prefer a photo because it gives you an example right here as to what you might see there.

So let me just repeat what I've said many times: it is the only show that I really care about exhibiting in. When I started off as a young ambitious, abstract painter things that was not the case. I cared mainly about showing at 'prestigious' shows and galleries. Though that's not really correct either. I was thrilled to get into a lot of juried shows, though actually seeing the shows and the varied quality of the work often seemed to diminish the accomplishment.

I think that the difference today is that there is one place that I KNOW I'll be happy to exhibit and also know that I won't have mixed feelings about the quality of the other work. That is an unusual situation. I suppose that is partially because art that is focused on nature rarely makes it into the galleries or museums that I used to consider the ideal venue for my own work. That really just says something about the close-mindedness of the art world. As far as I can tell there still is a strong inherent bias against nature-based art, especially wildlife art. Many taboos have fallen in the 'art' world but not that against wildlife art. But back to my point:choosing between the most prestigious 'art' exhibitions in the US for instance and 'The Natural Eye', I unhesitatingly go for the latter. Why? Because it is straightforward art, based on real feelings about nature, and not self-befuddled by art theories, proprieties, trends, etc. It wears its heart on its sleeve as most good are also does!

So, with that said, I hope readers will take the opportunity to see that exhibit by clicking on the link above. Even better you can buy almost all of the art that is on exhibit! Best of all of course would be to see it for yourself but to do so you'll need to be in London for the first 10 days of October.

I've written so much in the past about why I find this exhibition to be so exciting that I'll try not to repeat myself here. But I would say that just copying a photograph of a wildlife subject is really not art; it is copying. Many people do it and there is an audience for it. But when you want to go beyond that as an artist there are a million other decisions you have to make, including whether or not you even want to refer to a photo at any point in making the art. There are so many other decisions that then stand in front of the artist. I mentioned some of them in last post so again I won't repeat myself.

I do just want to say that the richness and variety of the decisions that artists can make about wildlife and art are always on full display here. The imagination, creativity and love of the natural world are on full display. This is not love of being able to copy a photo; it is a love of the wildlife itself and finding way to get that down on paper/canvas, in wood/metal, etc., etc.

I rarely write about how any of my work came to be in terms of the actual subject and how I portrayed it so I thought I'd take the opportunity to do that here

The oldest mokuhanga, Cedar Waxwings in Juniper, is based on me seeing 100s of Cedar Waxwings last fall in Philadelphia. Over the last 10 years or so I've gotten used to seeing some Cedar Waxwings very near to our house, often 10-20 at a time. But last year there was a week or two where I was actually see 100 at a time. That was unusual, and striking! If you have seen my very quick brushpen sketches from life of birds you know that I like doing them. They are a very quick, usually less than a 1-2 minutes, sketch of a bird from life. This I think often helps to capture the shape, movement and just general impression of a bird. I had been making sketches like that of these birds over the last few years.  But I've never had the opportunity to see and sketch so many. Eventually I tried to incorporate those sketches, and the incredible sense of movement in them, in a print. I did that with the simple linear shapes. But what about their environment? Many of them were in junipers, which really are red cedars, and they were busy eating the blue berries. I have sometimes accidentally printed a wood block upside down while making a print, and liked the results. I think that it was also an accident here but it might not have been. In any case I realized that printing a few blocks upside down allowed me to have the same waxwing form doubled but in surprising positions and colors. Of course it's not quite that simple. I had to do a lot of exploration to decide which parts of the upside down blocks to print and which to skip. Mokuhanga, being a water-based type of printing, allows for incredible richness of color overlays. So that was another reason to print some blocks upside down: it makes for very rich color.  Of course there are many standard renderings of waxwings sitting on branches. But I wanted to do something that caught the real frenzy of 100s of them eating and flying about at the same time.

The next mokuhanga was based on a visit I and my wife made to Morris Arboretum early in the year after a big snow storm. We were sure to see a lot of pristine snow and probably some interesting birds as well. We didn't see as many birds as we expected but at some point I saw something popping out of the top of distant conifers, perhaps hemlocks. They were distant but their movement made me think Yellow-rumped Warblers. They are the warbler most likely to be seen in our area in winter. We walked over toward that area and as we got close one or two of them came down close to us in much smaller trees. So we could clearly ID them. Since they are ubiquitous for awhile in fall and sometimes spring I've done a lot of sketches of them, none wholly satisfying. I've also tried to sketch them quickly with a brush pen. That still is my preferred way to sketch and so the main bird here is based on that type of sketch. However here I wanted color  and shape, not line. So the warbler remains quite simple, just like the rest of the shapes. Again it just seemed like a more, interesting way to portray them. But speaking of 'them' where are 'they?' Most people will only see one. That is because I also wanted to portray the bread popping up out of a toaster phenomenon that first drew my attention to them. In a very detailed painting using very small brushes I' might have been able to portray them realistically. But carved wood does not allow for such precision, at least using most wood, and it wouldn't have been in keeping with the simple shapes of the rest of the composition. In the end I opted for 3-4 curved yellow shapes near the tops of the conifers. This is artistic license.

The most recent mokuhanga was inspired by seeing a tiny Wilson's Warbler, flitting in and out of cover, in somewhat early spring at the nearby Roxborough Reservoir. Coincidentally he is portrayed in the same type of vegetation as the waxwings, a Juniper or Red Cedar. I don't see Wilson's very often, especially in Philadelphia. So I wanted to commemorate that. BUT I barely saw him. He is tiny to begin with and actively flits about. In the wind of that day he was only visible for nanoseconds at a time. How could I portray this? I made a very small brushpen and watercolor sketch based a photo that I took that day. But how could I make a print of something with so little definition? Finally I thought about including two other birds I had seen that day. Both Warbling Vireos and Common Yellowthroats breed at the reservoir but do not overwinter there. This might have been the first day I'd seen them in 2026 but if not they were still fairly new arrivals. And they are emblematic at least to me of some of the birds that nest there. The Warbling Vireo is also a very plain bird but one that I've always wanted to portray. So this was the chance. It took quite awhile to take three sketches of each bird and move them around until I liked the composition. And it is realistic in the sense that vireo and yellowthroat were on the berm that divides the two basins of the reservoir, while the Wilson's was in a Juniper in full sun in one of the basins(the dry one). But there was the same problem as with the small Yellow-rumps? How could I carve something so small and far away in wood? In this case I tried to carve just enough to make it give the impression of a Wilson's. I should add that this mokuhanga took quite awhile to print, after taking twice that amount of time to come to the final composition. There were 10-11 blocks with many being printed more than once.

My brushpen sketches take less than 2 minutes. My mokuhanga take close to 2 months. Make of it what you will!