Tubac artist lands permanent spot in noted museum

Special to the Green Valley News

Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville, Ga., will permanently showcase Tubac artist Nick Wilson’s “Natural Flow,” a 14-foot bronze sculpture honoring the ageless marriage of the North American Indians with their native land.

Scheduled to soon occupy a 17-foot-high corner of the 80,000-square-foot facility in northern Georgia, the second largest art museum in the state, it marks the end of a seven-year dream for the famed wildlife painter and sculptor.

“I never saw the sculpture in one piece until three days ago,” Wilson said, explaining his project in five pieces that culminated in a breathtaking depiction of young warriors gathering water from a pool beneath a waterfall while a mountain lion watches from a ledge above.

He was finally able to view it in its entirety at “Beyond Bronze,” a Tucson fine arts foundry where the final patina was added before shipping.

Eight feet wide and seven feet in depth, “Natural Flow” is only one of the crowning achievements for the renowned wildlife artist featured in galleries and museums across North America and Great Britain, as well as countless magazines and publications, including Arizona Highways.

Wilson moved to Arizona from Reno in 1970 to take over as curator of exhibits for the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum when he was only 20.

He was commissioned in 1982 to paint “Jungle World,” a 16,000-square-foot mural for New York’s Bronx Zoo, followed by “Snowy Owls,” a Central Park Zoo mural in New York City, as well as “Wildcat Family,” a 12-foot bronzed piece completed for the Alumni Plaza at UofA in 2004, commissioned by then-university president and art collector Peter Likens.

This piece will become the largest sculpture in this nationally known Smithsonian-affiliated center, also boasting a science museum and recognized for the most extensive collection of Western art in the Southeast.

It’s a tribute to Native Americans and their connection to the natural earth and its wildlife through time, Wilson said.

“Indians and animals have a closer relationship together than the white man does,” he said.

“They both represent power necessary to survive.”

The cascading water moving from the mountain lion to the pool where the warriors kneel highlights that connection as well as its life-giving importance to both man and animal, he said.

“Man and animal were separate equals relying on the same resource. Water is a necessary element for survival that brought them together.”

Wilson’s work, including many of his famous Gouache (opaque watercolor) paintings, are on display at the Karin Newby Gallery in Tubac.

Mike Touzeau is a freelancer writer for the Green Valley News.