Creating work that resembles John James Audubon's classic images of wildlife and birds, Walton Ford subverts them to narrative painting whereby he comments on contemporary society such as its desecration of nature.

He showed early art talent as a child who was raised in Croton in the suburbs of New York City. His father was an art director for Time-Life. As a teenager, Ford determined to be a herpetologist, and even, with his indulgent mother's knowledge, kept a five-foot black pilot snake in his closet, feeding it rats.

A major inspiration for his depiction of animals came from his grade-school reading of Audubon's Birds of America and from his realization that he could draw almost as well as Audubon. However, he developed a disgust for Audubon when he learned that Audubon killed his subject matter.

In the late 1970s, Ford studied film making at the Rhode Island School of Design, but eventually devoted himself full time to painting with a year in Italy studying Renaissance art reinforcing that decision.

In the 1980s, Ford settled in New York City, but with his realist painting style, he was bucking the tide of prevalent art expression, which was abstraction and contemporary realism.

Source: ArtForum