A lifelong passion
Ryan Kirby, Blowing Smoke, oil, 30 x 24.
This story was featured in the June 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art June 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
WILDLIFE ARTIST Ryan Kirby enjoys uniquely intimate glimpses of the animals he paints. As an avid deer and turkey hunter, he comes face-to-face with most of his subjects in their natural habitats while he’s hunting in the wilderness, whether in the mountains around his home in western North Carolina or farther afield. “I rarely paint a subject I haven’t hunted or don’t know well,” says Kirby. “When I first see a scene that captures my imagination, I’m wholly focused on the animal,” he adds. “I try to portray that scene with the same sort of awe and wonder that the viewer would experience in person.”
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- Ryan Kirby, Deer Rolling Right Along, oil, 20 x 30.
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- Ryan Kirby, Whistlin’ Dixie, oil, 18 x 24.
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- Ryan Kirby, Bottomland Bachelors, oil, 20 x 30.
Kirby’s ability to recreate such exhilarating moments on his canvases—to convincing effect—has earned him a large following. He’s routinely invited to the widely attended Southeastern Wildlife Exposition, and his oil paintings have gained recognition elsewhere, too. His impressionistic portrait of a commanding bull elk, entitled BLOWING SMOKE, was recently featured on the cover of Outdoor Life magazine’s winter issue, and he runs a successful e-commerce business selling canvas and paper prints of his original oils.
Even as a boy growing up on his family’s farm in Illinois, Kirby’s artistic talents garnered attention. In high school, he won the Illinois Junior Duck Stamp art competition three times, and hunters from a local gun club frequently commissioned the budding artist to paint their bird dogs. “In the summer, I’d bale hay and paint,” he says. At Bradley University in Peoria, IL, Kirby studied multimedia and graphic design, snagging a job after graduation as an illustrator and designer for the National Wild Turkey Federation in South Carolina, where he worked for seven years. “Even as a designer, I was very hands-on in creating,” he says. “I would always sketch out my designs before laying them out on a Mac, and I hand-drew a lot of my illustrations.”
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- Ryan Kirby, Elk the Defender, oil, 20 x 30.
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- Ryan Kirby, Elk Crossing Guard, oil, 24 x 30.
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- Ryan Kirby, Deer Scrape Line, oil, 36 x 24.
Today the artist still takes on freelance illustration work, but he’s living the life of a full-time painter. “I’d love to go to Africa one day and paint some African big game,” he says. But even if he had to paint white-tailed deer for the rest of his life, adds Kirby, he’d continue growing as a wildlife artist. “I feel like you could dedicate your life to one species, and they would teach you more each day you paint them.” —Kim Agricola
representation
www.ryankirbyart.com
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- Ryan Kirby, Standing Tall, oil, 24 x 18.
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- Ryan Kirby, River Runners, oil, 20 x 30.
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- Ryan Kirby, Sons of Thunder, oil, 24 x 40.
This story was featured in the June 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art June 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
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