Richard Sloan (1935-2007)

In the spring of 1998, the University of Arizona Press published The Raptors of Arizona featuring the birds of prey of the Southwest illustrated by 42 paintings by Richard Sloan. One of America’s premier bird artists, Sloan is renowned as a painter of tropical birds of South and Central America and painted the State Bird Collection for the Griggsville Wild Bird Sanctuary. Sloan is known as the “Dean of Rainforest Painters.” He was the first wildlife artist in North American to turn all his efforts as a painter to documenting exotic animals and birds of the world’s tropics with emphasis on the birds of the Western Hemisphere tropics. He attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago and worked as staff artist in Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo. His paintings have been exhibited at the National Geographic Society’s Explorers Hall, the American Museum of Natural History, Carnegie Museum, Royal Scottish Academy. He was commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund to design postages stamps for covers for several tropical governments. In 1994, he was honored by the Leigh Yawkey-Woodson Art Museum in Wisconsin as the Bird Artist of the Year, an award given to only one artist each year. Among those peers are Roger Tory Peterson and Louis Agassiz Fuertes. He received many awards, recognitions, and accolades for characterizing birds in their habitats (see website).

We in the Southwest are honored with this unique collection of Southwestern Raptors--comparable to the efforts of Audubon’s Birds of America. A portion of each print purchased of the Raptors of Arizona will be available by grant to organizations and individuals working in habitat purchase, studies or education of the needs of raptors.