Painting to Scale: The Art of William B. Montgomery

Montgomery, William B.

P. O. Box 656

Elgin, TX 78621 USA

I am a native Texan, artist, and naturalist. I live in the copperhead-rich post oak woodlands east of Austin, Texas, with my wife, Margie Crisp, who is an artist and writer. My interest in art and herpetology developed at an early age and continues to this day. As a young man, my training in art in Italy sparked an interest in classical European painting—the early natural history etchings and engravings inspired a passion for traditional printmaking processes. Although Texas creatures — birds, mammals and herpetofauna — have replaced human figures in my latest oil paintings, I have retained the lush painting style and rich colors of my Renaissance influence. My etchings and lithographs can be seen on the covers of Biology of the Pitvipers, Klauber’s Rattlesnakes, Biology of the Vipers, The Biology of Rattlesnakes, and others. As part of the visual survey of my artistic career, I will present my most recent project, the series of 20+ paintings depicting animals and landscapes of the Nueces River of Texas from the headwaters to the Gulf created for a newly published book, The Nueces River: Río Escondido, authored by Margie Crisp (Texas A&M University Press, 2017). Currently, I am working on a series of four large paintings with flora and fauna from the four corners of Texas, North, South, East, and West.