Conservation Stamp Paintings

Call for Art

The DLNR Division of Forestry and Wildlife asks artists to submit artwork for the Hawai’i Wildlife Conservation and Game Bird Stamp. Since I’m building my portfolio with conservation images, I was excited to create paintings that fit the parameters.

The wildlife conservation stamp is a requirement for Hawai‘i state hunting licensees while the game bird stamp is required for anyone intending to hunt game birds. Both stamps will also be available to stamp collectors.

This year the two species are Hawaiian Land Snails and the Chestnut-bellied Sandgrouse.

Hawaiian Land Snails

As I started doing research on the kahuli, or endemic land snails, I fortuitously found a special talk happening at the Bishop Museum. I was able to chat with two scientists in the Malacology Department and see some snails up close. It was super cool and informative!

There used to be 750 endemic snails across the Hawaiian islands. They used to be ubiquitous in the forests and at one time their shells were used in lei-making. They range in size from the head of a pin to about the size of a thumb.

Nowadays, land snails are under extreme threat due to habitat loss, invasive plants, and predators. More than 2/3 species have already gone extinct. Each species is super specialized to a specific piece of land, which makes any disturbance quite catastrophic.

In my painting, I chose to depict a view of Mt Kaala, the highest point on Oahu, which is where several of the snails I saw in person originally lived. There are several different species represented to show a small snippet of the diversity.

18”x24” acryla-gouache on wood panel

Chestnut-bellied Sandgrouse

Admittedly, I did not do as much of a deep dive into the Sandgrouse, but it was a very fun prompt.

I chose to represent both the male and female birds in a stylized way. I placed the birds in a rocky landscape with a few sprigs of greenery to match their habitat.

The beautiful colors of the Chestnut-bellied Sandgrouse inspired my color palette of vibrant earth tones. I continued the rich colors into the abstract sky with radiating rounded shapes to balance the more textural brushwork in other parts of the composition.

24”x18” acryla-gouache on wood panel