Regardless of the setting of Robert Bateman’s paintings, from the cold birch woods of Ontario, to the hot plains of Kenya to the adobe walls of New Mexico, they evoke an impression of elegy. The passage of time, as one form passes into another, moves through the shading, brush lines, and the positions of the painting’s natural subjects, whether that be rhinoceros, coyote or brown pelican. Bateman’s scenes are full of curiosity and clever allusions, but they are never innocent or grim, instead imbued with the indifference of natural symbiosis.
Possibly the most important years in my life were the three years I spent at the wildlife research station in Algonquin Park at Lake Sasajewun, a job I got by fluke. It changed my life. I was like Kipling’s Brer Rabbit, bred and born in the briar patch. I felt I was bred and born to be in a wildlife research camp, studying the distribution of jumping mice or censusing birds.
Later, I worked a summer in Ungava, the little bite out of Northern Quebec. I was a mouse trapper looking for eastern heather vole, Phenacomys ungava. There are only two Phenacomys ungava [specimens] in all the museums of the world — and I caught about 85 of them that summer. (Taken from recent Canadian Geographic magazine.)
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