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Sportsman's Hunting
Yearbook 1998. Pages 58-61, and 139.
Jack Paluh's Outdoors by Bill Vaznis.
His vision of the
outdoors captures days of hunting past like few who have come
before him.
Every generation seems to produce an artist who hits a raw nerve,
a common chord in those who cherish the great outdoors. Unique
and talented, these men and women grab the attention of sportsman
and non-sportsman alike with a set of standards and a sense of
style all their own. Frederic Remington did it. So did James Bama,
Bev Doolittle, Robert Griffin and Terry Redland.
In 1994, another artist felt the pulse of the wilderness, and
painted his way into the American consciousness. His name is Jack
Paluh.
Paluh is not a newcomer to the art world, however. Not by a long
shot. His many achievements include:
· 1997 WQLN,
PBS station, "54 Suite" Artist.
· 1995 &1997 National Wild Turkey Federation Banquet
Artist.
· 1995-1996 PA Ducks Unlimited Greenwing Print of the Year
· 1993-1994 PA Ducks Unlimited Print of the Year
· 1993-1994 WQLN, PBS station, Membership Artist.
· 1990-1986 Artist of the Year, Minnesota Deer Hunter's
Association
· 1989 PA Game Commission Working Together for Wildlife
Artist.
· 1986 First Conservation Prints for the Pennsylvania Deer
Hunter's Association and the Pennsylvania Chapter of the National
Wild Turkey Federation.
Paluh's 49 Limited Edition Prints have also appeared in and on
the covers of many outdoor magazines. Several of these editions
were co-sponsored with other organizations, such as Fireside Classics
and the Multiple Sclerosis Society. But it was Paluh's skillful
depiction of Eastern Woodland Indians bowhunting whitetail deer,
turkeys, moose, and elk that has brought him fame and fortune.
Indeed, five of Paluh's first six prints from his acclaimed "Living
with the Land" series have sold out, doubling and tripling
and in some cases even quadrupling the original asking price for
the buyer. The sixth, "Wapiti Falls," will be sold out
by the time you finish reading this sentence. Sportsman's Hunting
recently interviewed Jack Paluh.
Sportsman's Hunting (SH):
You have certainly won the attention of bowhunters and historians
here in the northeast with your "Living with the Land"
series. What inspired you?
Jack Paluh : "I am intrigued with the 18th century, and how
the Eastern Indians, especially those of the powerful Iroquois
Confederacy, survived for thousands of years while living in complete
harmony with nature. My models are thus the Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca,
Onondaga and Mohawk. For me, painting American Indian hunting
vignettes become a nostalgic tool to help me bring the past back
to life."
SH: Your paintings are
noted for capturing the true spirit of the hunt. Are they historically
accurate, too?
PALUH: "I attend conferences on Eastern Indians, and collect
authentic Indian costumes. I also have several friends who are
expert historians who help me with the details. I do this in order
to make each painting as authentic as possible.
"For example, it was common for an 18th Century Iroquois
to wear a hair roach of dyed animal fur over the soft spot on
his head. It was thought that evil spirits could enter his body
here, hence the roach served as protection. The Iroquois would
also wear leggings with no fringe. The various eastern Confederacy
tribes of this time period didn't like breeches, and fringe was
more customary with the western tribes."
SH: Were the Iroquois
as good a hunter as they are so often portrayed?
PALUH: "Absolutely! Remember, they had to be successful in
the field, or they would simply perish. Hunting deer with their
bows and arrows was not a sport or a game. It was necessary for
their survival.
"Their methods, however, were peculiar to our standards.
For example, the Seneca used a pinch draw-their third finger was
wrapped around string because the nock end of their arrows were
very knobby. They would, in effect, pinch the arrow and pull it
back. We, on the other hand, use the Mediterranean method-one
finger above the nock and two below.
"The Iroquois were also excellent stalkers, rarely shooting
past 20 paces. And when they did shoot, they hardly ever missed.
They shot instinctively, without sights, and were very good at
fast moving animals. The preferred bows and arrows over blackpowder
because they could get more shots off with a bow. One muzzle blast
and the game often disappeared.
"Keep in mind that it was feast of famine in the 18th Century.
They would take as many animals as they could when they could,
and then share that kill with everyone in the tribe. They used
the entire deer, too. The hide was tanned with the deer's brains
and used for clothing, glue was made from the deer's hooves, tools
were fastened from the antlers and various bones and a strong
string came from the sinew."
SH: I own three of your
"Living with the Land" prints. The detail is astounding.
I've noticed that there are often objects of other animals skillfully
hidden about the canvas. They seem to relay a particular message
to the viewer, adding something special to the overall image.
They have become, I believe, your trademark.
In "Whitetail Ambush" for example, there's a feathered
arrow en route to a buck, a cross carved into a tree and a white
doe barley visible on the edge of the frame. And in "Native
Hunters" there is a metal tablet on the edge of the stream
bank. What is the significance of these objects?
PALUH: "In Whitetail Ambush," a group of hunters are
putting on an 18th Century deer drive while another group shoot
as the deer come into range. It was a Native American Belief that
harvesting a white deer foretold ill fortune and bad medicine.
If a hunter crossed paths with one, he would thank the Creator
and let it go in peace, as the hunting party did here. The cross
on the tree was left by Jesuit missionaries in hopes of converting
members of the tribe.
As for the tablet, I got that idea from an Allen Eckert novel,
and followed it up with some research at the Pittsburgh Historical
Society. In the summer of 1749, Captain Celoron de Bienville on
orders of the Marquis de la Galissoniere, Governor-General of
New France, buried leaden plates near the mouths of six major
eastern rivers in western Pennsylvania and Ohio: the Franklin,
Monongahela, Muskingum, Great Kanawa and Great Miami. It was the
burial of these plates along La Belle Riviere that paved the way
for the war between England and France in America, better known
today as the French and Indian War. Two of these plates have been
found, one of the others is represented in "Native Hunters."
SH: The Indians in your
paintings look like they know exactly what they are doing. Are
you an avid bowhunter, too?
PALUH: "I hunted rabbits with a homemade bow when I was in
grammar school. By then, I knew all about Fred Bear and Howard
Hill. Later I used to practice with by Bear Kodiak three or four
hours a day until my fingers on my left hand were thicker and
more calloused than those on my right hand. I took my first deer,
a doe at age 16, with that and an original Bear Razorhead. Since
then, I've tagged antelope, black beards and over 20 whitetail
bucks with a bow. Besides traditional equipment, I also hunt with
a 76-pound High Country Trophy Hunter, a Scott release and Muzzy
90s."
SH: What is your most
memorable bowhunt?
PALUH: It was a Pennsylvania deer hunt in '91. I was in a treestand
when some does entered a nearby draw. They caught my scent, and
ran off. Five minutes later I saw a set of antlers coming through
the brush. I rattled, and he looked right at me. He was after
those does, but he wanted to come over and fight, too. Well, he
went for the does. I rattled again, and he looked over in my direction
but it wasn't enough to bring him to me.
"Suddenly, it began to rain very hard; and inch in five minutes.
The buck just stood there motionless while the rain pored down.
When it stopped, the buck shook the water off his back like a
dog, put his nose to the ground and started to walk away. I rattled
again, but to no avail. I then blew a few notes on my grunt tube
in desperation. He did an immediate 180, and came right at me
to kick some butt! I can still see mud flying off his hooves as
he quickly closed the distance. Everything went the way it was
supposed to that morning, including me making a perfect shot.
A whitetail buck is undoubtedly the ultimate big game animal!"
SH: When did you start
painting?
PALUH: "I started painting full time 17 years ago when I
was 23. I had fallen 20 feet out of a permanent treestand while
bowhunting, and cracked a lower vertebrae in my back and messed
up my leg. As a result, I got laid off from my job as a truck
driver. I had always sketched, even as a kid, so it was natural
for me to paint while I was recuperating. I did a limited edition
whitetail deer print called "Monday Morning," and sold
them for $25 each. The 450 prints sold out in two months. Today,
they are valued at $1000 each. My employer later offered me a
supervisory position, and my future was in painting.
"I started off doing wildlife, but in 1994, after several
years of research, I released my first depicting Eastern Woodland
Indians. "Native Hunters" quickly sold out with the
help of the National Wild Turkey Federation. Since then, I've
done six additional prints in the "Living with the Land"
series: "Whitetail Ambush," "Instinctive Aim,"
"In Thanksgiving," "As The Mist Rises," "Wapiti
Falls," and soon to be released "Woodland Encounter."
SH: Many bowhunters
collect what's commonly called wildlife art. What is a signed
and numbered Limited Edition print?
PALUH: "That's when the artist controls the number of prints
made from the original painting. Each is a signed by the artist,
numbered along the margin by the artist (1/450. 2/450, 3/450,
etc.) and then made available to the public with a certificate
of authenticity. The plates are later destroyed, ensuring no other
prints will be made available. I generally limit the number of
prints from my artwork from 450 to 1500.
"If a Limited Edition print happens to sell out, it becomes
what's known as a collectible and goes on the secondary market
where they generally double in value. Some, in fact, will go much
higher according to the laws of supply and demand."
SH: What is an Artist
Proof?
PALUH: "Traditionally, they were the first prints that came
off the press, generally 10 percent of the total edition. In the
old days, the inks got weaker as the press ran, making those first
prints in the run more desirable. Fortunately, modern inks are
fade resistant and superior, making the first print in the series
as perfect as the last print.
"Today, an Artist's Proof is a separate edition, generally
10% of the run. For example, if the initial run is 1,500 prints,
then an additional 150 prints will be made available for an Artist's
Proof, making the total run of that print 1,650.
"If the print becomes a collectable, then an artist' proof
generally adds 30 to 40% over and above the original cost of the
print."
SH: What is a Remarque?
PAULH: "It is a statement of originality done to the print
in the margin by the artist for an extra fee. I charge $50. They
are drawn in ink or pencil, sometimes in color, to enhance the
print. They are about the size of a half-dollar, and add a personal
touch. In the collectible market, they can add a substantial value
to the print."
SH: Do you advise people
to buy art as an investment?
PALUH: "I like people to buy my work in order to look at
it and enjoy it. If that print becomes a collectible, that's a
bonus. Some prints do better than others, and some are more valuable
than others like stocks on the market.
"I had one collector purchase 10 "Native Hunters"
on first sight for $125 each. Today, they are worth $1,000 each.
I understand he sold each of them a year later, and went on the
hunt of his dreams."
Keystone Conservationist,
Volume 3, Number 1, May-June 2000. Page 24
Wildlife & The Artist By Bob Clark
Jack Paluh: Find Your Talents and Develop Them
Jack Paluh of Waterford,
has always loved to draw. In grade school he was known as a constant
doodler. He also grew up in a family that loved the outdoors,
and his father instilled in him at an early age a great passion
for hunting and fishing.
The thrill of observing nature added to the establishment of his
life's work. In his wildlife paintings, he worked to show the
interaction of nature and like, the quality, beauty and the purity
of it.
With a clear vision of honesty and lots of research, the images
he creates these days are of the long-ago eclipsed nation of eastern
native Americans. Their wild animal hunts, as viewed by Paluh,
are a spiritual and logical perspective on nature. His native
American art shows them at their very best.
And, when "wandering through" one of Paluh's works,
stalk like a native American yourself to be sure you find the
trademark hidden subject.
But, the successful artist almost didn't even come close to making
art his career. In fact, he almost lost the joy of doing something
else he dearly loves, bowhunting for deer. As he tells it, "In
the fall of 1982, while sitting in a treestand about 20 feet off
the ground, I had an accident. My treestand collapsed and fell
to the ground, with me close behind it."
He broke his back and was unable to work, laid up for four months.
During his time of recovery, he composed his first major painting
and went on to publish his first limited edition print. He placed
it with a local gallery and titled it Monday Morning.
Established as a wildlife artist, his self esteem was riding high,
and he devoted the entire next year to his dream of becoming a
full-time wildlife artist.
Over the past 20 years he has had many highs and very few lows.
His broken back, normally a low, turned out to bring him closer
to God. The adjustment made him become one of America's leading
artists. The accident provided the opportunity for him to pursue
an art career. Up to that point in his life, it seemed completely
out of reach.
Like many of us, coming up dry with words or ideas is not unusual
for Jack Paluh either. For him, however, coming up dry means coming
up with fresh ideas. His wife Marian, who works with him in the
studio, and their children, Adam, Joshua, and Megan, are always
coming up with new ideas and projects.
Like many wildlife artists, Paluh always followed the work of
the late Ned Smith in Game News magazine. It inspired him at an
early age. And he has lived up to that inspiration. His art won
the Minnesota Deer Hunters Contest in 1986 and 1990. As the Banquet
Art Artist for the National Wild Turkey Federation 1995-2000,
he has created new concepts in the painting of wild turkeys.
But, his highest honor is meeting the everyday people who have
bought his work and in talking with them. As in the beginning
days of recuperation from a broken back, he prayed that he would
be able to pursue an art career, he prays now to continue. He
wants to share his talents with others and give them the opportunity
to bring God's world into their homes.
Erie Times
News, January 5,1997, Section S, Pages 1S & 6S "A Portrait
of the artist as an outdoorsman" By Joan Benson-Cacchione
"My whole concept
of painting is to show the interaction of nature with man-the
beauty of it, the purity of it."
With those broad strokes, Waterford artist Jack Paluh paints the
simplest picture of what drives him to his easel each morning.
What he re-creates there, these days, are images of a long-eclipsed
nation of eastern American Indians-but from a singular perspective:
the logistics and spiritual nature of the wild animal hunt that
sustained families for generations prior to (and for a time after)
the arrival of Europeans.
After a 1981 injury brought his truck-driving career to a screeching
halt, Paluh built a successful art career throughout the 1980s
and early '90s by painting wildlife scenes. His finely detailed
renderings of buck, black bear, wolves, and other woodland creatures
(which are marketed through some 100 shops and galleries locally
and nationally, and to additional collectors through the mail)
became especially popular among hunters and outdoor enthusiasts.
In 1994, however, Paluh executed a dramatic shift in his work-adding
Eastern Woodland Indian figures to his more traditional wild animal
works. As a result, the artist introduced a new story element
to his paintings: the tension and drama of the hunt.
The most recent is the oil painting "Wapiti Falls,"
of which 1,500 prints have been issued, selling at $125 each.
The scene depicts a hunting party lying in wait near a roaring
waterfall for "wapiti" or elk, as they approach a stream
to drink.
"I am emphasizing living with the land. (These Indians) had
to feed themselves and use the land to survive," notes Paluh,
39, whose tall, bearded, and long-limbed appearance cuts the figure
of the classic outdoorsman. Although he now makes his living as
an artist, "hunter" is an avocation that he has always
embraced. In fact, Paluh notes that his own relationship with
his father, John, grew more out of their shared hunting forays
into Pennsylvania woodlands than from anything else. Paluh already
has laid the groundwork for passing the tradition on to his own
son, Adam, now 8.
"These woods have been hunted for thousands of years,"
he muses while gazing through a bank of nearly wall-sized windows
that overlook his rural acreage in southern Erie County. The property,
he says, is surrounded in part, by wetland and what are now designated
as state game lands. "I get my ideas from being outdoors,
by the work I produce is in that chair," he observes with
slight smile, gesturing toward the spot where an unfinished work
leans on his easel.
"I kind of get nostalgic wondering what life must have been
like (for the woodland Indians)," he says, "how they
survived for thousands of years, being in harmony with nature."
To gain some understanding of that, Paluh had embarked upon some
hunting of another type: digging up diaries and tracing down historical
accounts of the period, many of which were recorded by European
settlers in the eastern United States. He also frequents American
Indian conferences, including one held this past March in Archibald,
Ohio, where he consults with "archaeologists and historians,"
he says, and contemporary re-enactors of native American life
to get ideas.
Such research into the past has only fed his desire to explore
on canvas the relationship between the powerful, multi-tribe Iroquois
Confederacy and the white-tailed deer and majestic moose that
roamed the wilderness with them on parallel and dramatically intersection
paths. He calls this series "Living with the Land."
"My whole focus is based on the 18th century. …(During
that time) the Iroquois Confederacy was the most powerful eastern
Indian tribe," Paluh explains.
The Erie, or Eriez Indians, who once inhabited the southern shore
of Lake Erie, were of "Iroquoian stock," historian Paul
A.W. Wallace has written, but the tribe was defeated militarily
by the Huron tribe prior to the 18th century.
As Paluh explains his motivation and inspiration, he sits in the
light-filled workspace he has fashioned for himself in the renovated
farmhouse where his family now lives. Old and new works collide
on the walls of the studio. Graceful white-tailed deer stare our
from framed woodland clearings in some; in others, there is a
story unfolding as exotic figures with primitive weapons stalk
their prey.
All around the studio, handcrafted tools and native dress items
of the period, such as leather leggings and head ornaments made
form deer bone and porcupine quills, hang from racks or lean against
walls. Most of these items, fashioned by contemporary artisans,
Paluh will press into service when he needs models while working
on a piece.
"Over a period of time, I've collected authentic Indian costume
wear," he explains. The artist will often ask friends or
family members to don such attire to flesh out his design ideas.
"I'm looking at form and body posture as well as different
finger positions."
Paluh will select a site to pose the stand-in hunter somewhere
in the nearby woods, "where the light is good. Then I can
see the folds in the material (for instance), and I'll sketch
and photograph them for reference.
"It takes a lot of research. The hunting methods depicted
in the work are authentic," he observes. Paluh's goal is
to "keep in touch with the era (because) people want to know
the history, and the ancestors who lived here and their methods."
It is this new historical context to Paluh's wildlife art that
has broadened the market for his work to include collectors with
an interest in history and native-American culture. "The
Indian scenes," confirms Marian Paluh, his wife and business
partner, "have really expanded our market."
Anita Parker of Parker's Gallery in Edinboro, one of six local
outlets for Paluh's work, concurs. "There's a big market
for this type of art. There are just a few artists doing the Eastern
Woodland Indian," she explains.
Hundreds, she adds, have covered the better-known Western tribes,
but Jack has branched off," she notes. "He has tied
the Indian theme with the hunting theme. And that's filled a niche.
There was nobody doing that. It was an unexplored subject in the
art field."
Paluh "is reading about it and researching it and putting
it on paper for people to see and understand it. …He's crossed
over into another area successfully. Not all artists can do that,"
Parker says, pointing to "a large market locally and nationally
for Jack's artwork."
"His is an unique technique," agrees Jim Curry of Wesleyville,
an avid Paluh fan who wandered into North American Wilderness
Gallery on Buffalo Road two years ago and discovered the artists'
change in focus. At that point, Curry owned only one of Paluh's
earliest (unnumbered) prints, which he had picked up years ago
in a shop for $15 and framed himself. It is now worth $600. The
numbered print is worth $1,000.
"I thought it was a great move," Curry says to Paluh's
shift from traditional wildlife art into American Indian hunting
vignettes, "It brought in the historians, not just the hunters,"
as collectors, he says.
As far as collectors who are of American Indian descent are concerned,
Paluh is aware of "a few," he says, who have purchased
his work in Minnesota. He says his art has been "well-received"
among them.
Meanwhile, Curry, proprietor of Curry's Spectacle Shop, situated
across the street from North American Wilderness Gallery, owns
a few original Paluh oils as well as the full collection of his
limited-edition prints, which now number 49.
"His work tells a little story with each picture," Curry
points out as he gives a tour of his shop in Wesleyville, where
several samples of the artist's work is on display. Curry moves
from frame to majestic frame, which line the walls up a flight
of stairs and around a second-floor lab. He pauses before each
to interpret the larger story and then identifies small objects
that Paluh has hidden in each work, such as arrowheads in the
grass, faded footprints in snow, lost turkey calls or small knives
dropped in the brush.
Such hidden elements have become Paluh's trademark - a method
that draws the observer more intimately into the unfolding scene
as well as further back into a vanished time.
"I am just touching the surface," says Paluh, of that
lost world, in which survival truly meant "living with the
land."