Sandpiper on Carved Oyster Shell, bird carved from basswood painted with acrylic paint, base carved to resemble an oyster shell, 5 1/2in h x 5 1/2in w

A carver/artist for over 30 years.    He studied his paint detailing under Keith Meuller, who is a World Champion Artist/Carver.   Most of his work is done using basswood which is a local wood exceptional straight grain.    Each piece is hand carved using a very small carving knife and then to rotary tools, some of the carvings are textured, and all are highly detail painted.

Many of these larger pieces have competed in the Ward World Carving Championships on the east coast each year.   Many of the pieces have taken blue ribbons and some have taken Best of Show ribbons as well as cash rewards.

Steve likes to work with Acrylic paint having very fine pigments.   It allows him to finely paint and detail each feather with some having 5 to 8 layers of paint.  This gives the feather three dimensional depth.

All of the bases are also made from Basswood,  or in one case driftwood.   Some of the pieces have bases that were carved to look like oyster and scallop shells.  These too are highly painted to mimic a fresh shell.

Some of the pieces are birds in motion,  (Running, etc).