Judi Rideout Biography Continued:

     ...The gamut of the animal experience is visible there: the playfulness of two cubs; the wariness of a fox scouting food; the protectiveness of a mother guarding young.

     From brown bears to moose and caribou, Rideout gives viewers an up-close-and-personal look at one of the world's most fascinating wildlife habitats - Alaska. Moving to Alaska, outside of Palmer, was a dream come true for Rideout and Ken, her husband of 34 years.

     Upon settling in Alaska, they developed a steady diet of weekend hunting and fishing trips. Increasingly, Rideout stalked subjects for her drawings rather than dinner. "I wasn't that good of a shot so I kept busy watching," she says. Still she gave no thought to being a professional artist. However, fate intervened when Rideout took on a part-time job at a local gallery. "The gallery was a coop," she recalls, "and one of the members, a retired art teacher, became a constant cheerleader for my art." Soon original pastels were selling faster than Rideout could produce them. The sellingout of her first limited-edition print to locals gave Rideout the courage to make art her full-time career. An appearance at the 1984 Collectors Society's Wildlife & Western Art Exhibit in Minneapolis, Minnesota, brought Rideout her first national exposure. At the 1985 Pacific Rim Wildlife Art Show, Rideout received the prestigious "Peoples' Choice" Award.

     Largely self-taught, Rideout exhibits a remarkable technical precision. Her paintings start as detailed drawings of individual animals, which are then cut out and pinned to a board. Rideout jokes about what is a serious, often lengthy process of arranging and rearranging elements. She applies a solid undercoating of pastel to the suede matboard, chosen because the nap of the suede "holds" multiple layers of pastel. Moving from dark to light values, Rideout blocks in shapes. "It's not until I go back across the entire image, adding highlights and shadows that the animals become dimensional...that they have bulk and can breathe." She is constantly breaking her pastel sticks into little nubs, the better to get sharp points and thus the sharp lines needed for detail work. Rideout renders Alaskan mammals and birds with such realism as to invite comparison with photography, which comparison she considers a compliment of the highest order.

     Her powers of observation get a workout wherever animals are present, whether the occasion is Rideout's regular Saturday trips to the zoo with her five grand-children or sketching sessions at the Denali Park and McNeel River wildlife refuges. The results are portraits startling for their command of even the minutest of details, portraits that live up to the daunting task Rideout has set for herself: My goal is to let people know what an animal looks like up close, to make the person viewing feel like he can reach out and touch fur..."

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