SOUTHWEST WINGS
Birding and Nature Festival in Sierra Vista, Arizona
Greatest Little Birding Festival in the United States - since 1991
Our mission is to promote nature-based tourism and environmental awareness in southeastern Arizona
Festival Artist 2025 - Linda Feltner
Linda Feltner is an artist who specializes in natural history including painting, drawing, interpretive media design, book and magazine illustrations. She has produced numerous exhibits for the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, US Forest Service, and Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument and other state, municipal and private agencies, departments, museums and organizations.
Linda was elected President of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators, serving from July 2016-2018 and currently teaches with Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Art Institute , Cochise College Center for LifeLong Learning, and numerous national workshops. Her studio is located in southeastern Arizona, where she and her husband, T. Ben Feltner, enjoy the diversity of nature in an area known for its birds, butterflies, dragonflies, reptiles, and plants.
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Linda's latest book, Drawing Nature, was published in 2024 by Princeton University Press.
Linda's fabulous artwork features a delightful Black-throated Sparrow and a foraging Tarantula Hawk Wasp
Drawing Nature: The Creative Process of an Artist, Illustrator, and Naturalist presents the creative process of an acclaimed nature artist, guiding readers from field sketches to finished art and demonstrating how science and the close observation of nature can be integrated into the artist’s work to create dynamic, meaningful images. With chapters that flow from drawing basics to more advanced methods and concepts, this beautifully illustrated book is like a look inside the artist’s sketchbooks to discover their secrets.
Linda demonstrates how observation and recording are sparks to creativity. Her journey from loose sketches and drawings to a completed work begins with observing a natural process, object, or interaction between organisms. Her curiosity generates scientific inquiry that, when researched, helps her to answer a question or make broad, often surprising connections. Blending examples of her stunning artwork with invaluable insights into time-honored art techniques, Feltner illustrates how sketching, developing an image, and scientific accuracy are essential to her art and encourages each of us to cultivate our own powers of observation and discover anew the world around us.