Milt Thomas

The exhibition of artist James Prosek – At Work is in its second week at the Vero Beach Museum of Art and has sparked great interest in his depiction of birds, fish and other wildlife. Prosek is an artist-naturalist in the tradition of John James Audubon and Carl Linnaeus.

More than 70 of his artworks are on display from plein air field studies to studio-based paintings and sculpture. As you enter the exhibition, you cannot help but feel you have stepped into Audubon’s world of exquisitely detailed flora and fauna. Then, Prosek’s unique talent brings each specimen to life. For instance, you will be amazed by his mural of bird species arranged in a full spectrum of colors and a life-size rendition of a 500-pound swordfish! He also exhibits a sense of humor, merging fish and fowl into a single specimen.

Prosek, who previously exhibited his work here in 2015, has published more than a dozen books and written for the New York Times and National Geographic. His work has been shown in London’s Royal Academy of Arts, Yale Center for British Art, Asia Society’s Hong Kong Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Academy of Sciences in Washington, and now at the Vero Beach Museum of Art.

Born in 1975, his prolific career began at home. As Prosek describes it in his recent visit to Vero, “My father grew up in tropical Brazil and moved to New York, bringing his love of birds with him. I first loved to draw birds and other wildlife. At age nine I also became obsessed with fishing and was fixated on trout. I went to the local library looking for books on trout and couldn’t find any, so I eventually decided to write a book.”

As a boy, he was able to document three kinds of trout known to him at the time.  Then, as a student at Yale in 1996 he published his first book, Trout: An Illustrated History. It included watercolors of all seventy types of trout in North America. It was the first book of its kind. His second trout book, Trout of the World (Abrams), was published in 2003, and included one hundred watercolors of trout native to Europe, Asia and North Africa.

The Prosek Exhibition draws from three decades of work, including – but not limited to –  trout studies. His work includes outdoor studies from around the world along with studio work. Prosek loves traveling to new places, meeting people and painting flora and fauna wherever he goes. In 2010, he went on a scientific collecting expedition to remote regions of Suriname in South America. In 2021, he went to the Texas Hill Country to study endangered prairie habitats. That led to a body of work on plant ecosystems.

One of his large murals on exhibit is an abstract drawing of eels. “Eels are known as freshwater fish, but they hatch in the Sargasso Sea near Bermuda, then migrate to rivers all along the eastern coast and return to spawn in the ocean. That part of their life cycle was only recently discovered.”

His 2011 HarperCollins book, Eels: An Exploration, From New Zealand to the Sargasso, of the World’s Most Mysterious Fish and was adapted as a documentary on the PBS series, Nature in 2013.

Prosek – At Work is not to be missed. It will be on view through October 25. For more information, go to the Museum website at https://www.vbmuseum.org/james-prosek-at-work/ or call (772) 231-0707.