Always sketching, Harry McVay is seen in his studio working on the caricatures that he does for fun and profit.
If things had worked out differently, Harry McVay says he could have been a naturalist – maybe an entomologist, because he’s studied bugs since he was a kid. And with his propensity for exploring nature in solitude, he would also have been happy as a park ranger.
McVay, a native Floridian, is a self-taught environmentalist who knows a cypress dome from sand hill scrub and has witnessed a gopher tortoise feeding on a hog plum. With camera in hand he has photographed swallowtail kites and cockaded woodpeckers and a host of other birds to study their plumage and the way they hold themselves in flight.
But McVay is first and foremost an artist who combines his experience of nature with an exceptional talent for portraying it in paint. Over the years he has responded to requests for paintings and drawings of Florida’s natural environment and wildlife; the most ambitious to date is a 5-foot by 8-foot acrylic on linen painting commissioned by the Nature Conservancy.
This work depicts 10 pristine Florida habitats with their associated animals (27 different species in all) and is on display at the 8,500-acre Disney Wildlife Preserve, located 15 miles south of Disney World. McVay lived for five months in an isolated cabin on the preserve while he created the painting, which required on-location sketches and his own photographic notes to complete. Other commissioned works, including signage illustrating the ecology of Florida, can be seen at nature preserves across the state, including Myakka River State Park, St. Sebastian River Buffer Preserve and Blowing Rock Preserve on Jupiter Island.
Read the entire article in the March 2008 issue
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