We were lucky to catch up with Erin E. Hunter recently and have shared our conversation below.
Erin E., thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
As a kid, I had three main passions: drawing, reading, and animals. I grew up in a house with lots of pets, where spiders and other creepy-crawlies were escorted outside instead of being squashed, and as the daughter of an English teacher, there were books everywhere. And I was ALWAYS drawing—I was that kid who got in trouble in school for daydreaming and drawing horses.
As an adult, I’m still a person who draws and reads a lot, and I’m deeply interested in learning more about the world around me. This manifests in a lot of ways—my husband and I are always picking up new hobbies like beekeeping or pickling or creating a habitat garden. After reading The Forgotten Pollinators in graduate school, I became totally entranced with plant-pollinator relationships, and my artwork is an attempt to say to the viewer, “look at this! Isn’t it wonderful?” I see my personal work as a way to draw people’s attention toward the incredible diversity of insect life all around us, and the interdependence between plants and their floral visitors. If I can show people how beautiful bees, moths, and butterflies are, I believe they are more likely to want to protect these creatures and the plants on which they depend.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
When I was nine, we went to visit my great-aunt Alice, whose house was full of all kinds of little treasures—costume jewelry, geodes, and books. I picked up The Reader’s Digest Guide to North American Wildlife from her bookshelf and I must have been immediately entranced, because she gifted it to me that day, and I read the whole thing cover to cover. I wanted to know the names of all the plants and animals where I lived, and I wanted to know how to do the kinds of illustrations in the book. In college, I fell in love with typography and majored in graphic design, but some part of me was always yearning to get back to drawing plants and animals. I worked as a graphic designer for a couple years, then lived in New York for two more years, where I worked retail and odd jobs to pay for night classes at the Arts Students League. After applying to and being rejected from several MFA illustration programs in New York and LA, I applied to the science illustration program at UC Santa Cruz (now at CSU Monterey Bay) and was accepted. I was so thrilled to be in the company of other people who loved to draw and paint nature. Without a science OR fine art background, I had to work hard to catch up, but that was fine with me—I have always loved to learn, and I was surrounded by generous people who helped me.
In grad school, I developed the illustration skills I’d so desperately wanted to have as a kid, and my work started focusing on the relationships between plants and animals, specifically plant-pollinator relationships. After grad school, I completed three internships—as a botanical illustrator, working with a botanist at California Academy of Sciences; as an entomological illustrator, working with an entomologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History; and as a science book illustrator for Sally Ride Science. The last of these turned into a job, and I was a staff illustrator for SRS for several years—but I only worked four days a week, reserving Fridays for freelance work. This allowed me time to develop a painting portfolio, and to work on other projects. I illustrated four children’s books, taught field sketching and other kinds of natural history illustration, and participated in solo and group art shows. I also sold prints and notecards featuring my artwork. Eventually that job ended and I moved on to an academic publisher, Annual Reviews, and today, I split my time between technical work for AR, and my own pollinator-themed paintings.
I’m always interested in finding new avenues for my work, and trying to grow as an artist. I have completed three artist-in-residence programs with the National Parks Service; earlier this year, I had a solo show at San Francisco Botanical Garden; next year I’ll have a solo show at the Monterey Museum of Art, and will be teaching a workshop for Denver Botanic Garden and a summer session for CSU Monterey Bay. I have an online shop for my notecards, stickers, and giclee prints. And I’ve started expanding beyond visual art—I’ve found that I really enjoy writing essays for magazines, giving talks at conferences, and being interviewed about science illustration on podcasts. Each of these gives me a different kind of opportunity to talk about the things I love, and a chance to advocate for my beloved plants and pollinators.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding part of being an artist is being able to bring to life all of the ideas that are constantly percolating in my head. I have always had a ton of ideas, but as a kid, I didn’t have the skills to create them. But with the skills I learned in school and the experience I have gained over time, now I can actually make some of those ideas happen. As an example, my kids and I raised a beautiful ceanothus moth from caterpillar to adult, and now I’m working on a painting of native California moths, including this moth and the plant we fed the caterpillars. I am constantly inspired by the world around me and get ideas all the time. I also absolutely love seeing my artwork out in the world—the thrill of that never grows old.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
I have kind of a two-fold mission or goal for my work. When I’m doing my bread-and-butter illustration work (technical illustrations for an academic journal), I have a sense of being part of something much larger than myself—I am part of a team of illustrators who work on very technical, detailed figures for scientists. It feels like I am making a small contribution to this wider arc of scientific discovery. When I’m working on my personal work, which focuses of plant-pollinator relationships or wild ecosystems, I feel like I have the privilege of introducing people to this incredible natural world that is all around them, even in areas that are pretty well developed. I always think of the wonderful painter John Cody, who painted larger-than-life portraits of gorgeous silk moths; in his book, Wings of Paradise, he writes: ““… I had long observed the curious fact that people will look closely at something an artist has taken pains to paint faithfully when they will not give more than a passing glance to the thing itself, which in many cases is more beautiful and interesting. It is as though they say to themselves, ‘As someone bothered to paint it, it may be worth looking at.’” This is such an eloquent description of how I feel about my artwork.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.eehunter.com
- Instagram: @erinhunterart
Image Credits
Artist photo credit: Amber Renee, 2017 All other photos taken by artist or by Elliot Maiorana