Painted: 10/24/16
About the Bird: Highly sociable birds, Pinyon Jays wander the West in flocks, dining on seeds of the pinyon pine. The pines produce their best seed crops only with ideal weather; as the climate becomes hotter and more unpredictable, the jays may have less food and raise fewer young, leading to population declines. Audubon’s climate models predict that the jays could lose a third of their current range.
About the Artist: Vermont artist Mary Lacy often focuses on painting native creatures back into the city conscience. She liked the relatively monochromatic color scheme of the Pinyon Jay for the freedom it offered her to play within that one color, making it more about dimension and shape than pattern. “No two shapes on the bird are the same color,” she says, "except its feet.”
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