Artist Emil Morhardt expresses his passion for birds and wildlife through realistic acrylic paintings. I photograph them in the wild and at wildlife recovery centers and use these images to capture individual birds’ personalities, says Emil. At a young age, he learned to paint from his father who was an art teacher and was one of the early California watercolorists. He learned his father's watercolor techniques while gaining an appreciation of opaque media from his dad's many artist friends who mostly painted in oil. In 1980, Emil began his art career by painting landscapes of the San Francisco Bay Area and the Eastern Sierra where he grew up. He earned a BA in Zoology from Pomona College and a Ph.D. in Environmental Physiology and Ecology from Rice University. In 2011, he moved to Santa Barbara, where he worked as a Professor of Environmental Biology at Claremont McKenna, Scripps, and Pitzer Colleges. After his retirement in 2016, he focused his energies as a full-time artist, working from his home studio. Located on a high ridge, he relishes an unobstructed north-facing view of the mountains behind Santa Barbara. While he paints, foxes, bobcats, and roadrunners occasionally walk up to the glass doors and peer in as deer and coyotes run by.