Wildlife and Visual Artists in the Skylands

A painter of wildlife for many years, Guy's work has been heralded by naturalists, sportsmen and sportswomen, and conservationists, and sought by fine art collectors. Prized by presidents and public alike, popular with museumgoers, a Coheleach painting offers revelation as it entertains, returning to the world some of its captured essence. For many, the work of Guy Coheleach defines the genre.

From a Bernardsville studio in Somerset County, grand images of the inhabitants native to our planet's great untamed spaces -- African Veldt or vast Siberian forest, as well as more familiar environs --emerge. One of nine Coheleach (pronounced CO-lee-ack) children who grew up in Baldwin, Long Island, Guy's love of animals formed the basis of his insight into the lives of creatures great and small, and hinted at the career that would later soar with their masterful rendering. "My mother and father were wonderful about it," he remembers as he tells the story of keeping poisonous reptiles at home. "As long as I kept them fed and watered and kept their cages clean." Once, as a small boy, when a teacher held up to the class a drawing of a golden eagle Guy had produced instead of the subject of the day's study, the artist learned a very different lesson. "He said that one day I would make twenty thousand dollars a year drawing pictures like that. It was more money than I could imagine because I knew my father's income was only six thousand dollars."

So paint sets and drawing sets became the gifts of choice to the young Coheleach. He worked diligently at his craft, depicting the predators that held such a deep fascination for him. From Long Island to a Catholic high school in Brooklyn, New York, Guy's study of the natural world continued and there was growing power in the expressiveness of his art. "I'm really a person who never grew up, in a way. I discovered cars and girls like everybody else, but I never lost that first love of nature, and of wild animals in their habitat", he explains.

The halls of Cooper Union in New York drew young Guy after high school, and taking the fork in the road marked 'artist' where the other was marked 'architect', his formal studies began. A stint in the Army came in between matriculation and graduation, however. Guy's service in an intelligence unit brought him to the Korean peninsula, and later to scene of the retreat of French forces from Dien Bien Phu in what was then a far away French Indochina.

Once established in the life of a working commercial artist, the fates didn't take long to point their way to a life of artistic expression beyond rendering of tempting glasses of beer. An illustrated calendar commission turned away by prominent wildlife artist Don Eckelberry resulted in Guy's taking the job, and later his fee in calendars--which he promptly sent to every art director in the city. The official recognition of his gift as a renderer of the animal world had begun.

This recognition now includes that of galleries in many places around the world, the permanent collection of the White House, and several museums. Many years and world travels later, after celebrated openings in world capitals, and commissions for individual works well into the five figures, Guy Coheleach's images still tell the timeless story of stealth, pursuit, and capture. His artwork fairly radiates a deep understanding of his subject, and his mastery of his media provides an astonishing example of exuberance and control.