{"id":106629,"date":"2026-10-26T07:10:32","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T14:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=106629"},"modified":"2026-10-29T07:41:50","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T14:41:50","slug":"birds-of-rank-alison-spencer-at-tracy-aviary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/birds-of-rank-alison-spencer-at-tracy-aviary\/","title":{"rendered":"Birds of Rank: Alison Spencer at Tracy Aviary"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Alison Spencer<\/a> never thought turkey vultures were particularly attractive. She knew they were important, and recognized that the king vulture is striking, but our local turkey vultures were, as she puts it, \u201ccommon and plain, even ugly or scary to a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then she spent four months sitting with one.<\/p>\n

Spencer arrived at Salt Lake City\u2019s Tracy Aviary in June as an artist-in-residence, charged with doing something she already loved: looking at birds and painting their portraits. She knew the aviary well. Her mother grew up in the neighborhood, and when the family traveled to Utah to visit grandparents, summer walks often took them there. \u201cBut, like most people, I\u2019d never really spent time sitting and soaking it in,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t know if the body of work is that different from what I planned, but the experience was infinitely different.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSitting and watching the turkey vulture at the Aviary for hours on end\u2014I now think she\u2019s one of the most beautiful birds I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d Spencer says. \u201cShe\u2019s a little shy, but gentle with the hawk she boards with; she spreads her wings wide to catch both raindrops and sunshine.\u201d The paintings Spencer made during her residency are now on view at Tracy Aviary\u2019s Chase Mill, Oct. 26-31.<\/p>\n

\u201cPortraiture of anything is wonderful in that way,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m not sure there\u2019s a way to paint a portrait without falling in love with your subject or the person you\u2019re painting for; there\u2019s just too much beauty in individuals, and you notice it more and more the longer you look at someone.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her portrait of the turkey vulture, the bird stands atop an extravagant heap of pale fabric while a circular mosaic spreads out behind her like a halo. She has been staged as one might stage a wealthy patron. \u201cI realized early on that I didn\u2019t want to paint birds in nature,\u201d Spencer says. \u201cI want them to stand out, I want people to see them individually, like royal portraiture; I worry that it\u2019s easy to dismiss them in natural settings as just another bird or part of the scenery.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In her work, three king vultures emerge from a black ground, wearing laurel wreaths around their brilliantly colored heads. A scarlet ibis inhabits an almost entirely red world, perched on folds of pink fabric before a decorative arrangement of leaves and circles. Elsewhere, two Sihek kingfishers perch on bundled green fabric while brown tree snakes wind around them. The snakes are the invasive species that wiped out the Sihek in the wild on Guam.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learn as much as I can about the birds before I paint them,\u201d Spencer says. \u201cThen I try to incorporate natural elements in unnatural ways\u2014like in the wallpaper or mosaic\u2014and man-made elements in natural ways.\u201d The result can be whimsical, but she also means it as a symbol of \u201cour tendency to destroy what is natural with the idea that we can replace it with something better, which never works out well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spencer hadn\u2019t arrived at the residency with much of a plan. She saw an Instagram post containing the words \u201cTracy Aviary\u201d and \u201cart\u201d and applied, she says, \u201cbefore I had any idea what the job entailed.\u201d She began with the superb starling, partly because it made the decision for her. The bird was curious about her from the first day\u2014\u201csmall enough to paint fast, and intrusive enough that I didn\u2019t have to think too long about how to paint him.\u201d After that, the choices got harder. \u201cPeople ask me all the time what my favorite bird is, and it\u2019s always whatever bird I\u2019m painting or watching at the moment,\u201d she says. \u201cI have dreams of painting them all, but I\u2019m such a slow painter, and an even slower thinker.\u201d<\/p>\n