For local artist Toni Lance, her upcoming exhibition, “Affinity for Feathers,” is a milestone. Though her watercolor paintings have hung in the galleries across the Virgin Islands for decades, this show will be a first for her. It is her professional debut as a photographer.
When asked if she was nervous about her crossing over to a new medium, Lance nonchalantly says no. While she is known as a painter, photography has always been a part of her life. In fact, she said it was her first artistic outlet.
“When I was in high school I was interested in birds and interested in photography,” she recalls. “I wanted to be a wildlife photographer for National Geographic.”
Lance studied photography in college, but gradually her interest shifted to painting.
“I discovered that photography took a whole lot of expensive equipment,” she says with a wry smile.
She retained her love of wildlife, however, and often tried to capture birds on canvas “like Audubon,” she says.
This love found a natural outlet when she moved to St. Croix in 1980. Finding no one here actively helping injured birds, she took on the role herself. She founded the St. Croix Avian Sanctuary at her south shore home, and has been rehabilitating injured and orphaned birds ever since.
Those birds naturally made their way into Lance’s paintings, but what few people realize is that for every portrait of a sulking pelican or stoic egret she hangs in a gallery, there is an almost identical photograph hidden away at her home.
Lance practices a painting technique known as photorealism, in which a photograph serves as a template for the piece. It’s a practice that makes perfect sense for wildlife painters. Even the injured birds at Lance’s sanctuary refuse to stay still for long. Working from a photograph allows her to capture details she would miss with the naked eye.
Until a year ago, Lance viewed these photographs merely as tools of her trade. But then her friend, photographer Tina Henley, complimented her shots and encouraged her to put together a show. She’d never considered showing her photographs before.
“I just never thought about doing both jobs,” she says. Now that she’s started curating an exhibit, however, she’s excited to share them with the public. “I’m thrilled, because it’s sort of something I’ve wanted to do since the beginning.”
Lance’s photographs are strikingly intimate. Though she grew up idolizing National Geographic, her images have little in common with that publication’s. These are not images of birds in their natural habitat; they are fine portraits, often captured at point blank range.
“What I get thrilled about now is more the photograph of what the skin is like by the pelican’s face or how his eyes are and all the different lines [on his face],” she says.
These are images only a rehabilitator could capture. Lance has gained a trust with her subjects that few other people will ever enjoy with a pelican, a hawk, or a falcon. She is part of their world, and as such, they show her a side they usually keep secret. Creatures most know as easily startled and ever vigilant, Lance captures as relaxed, vulnerable, and unarmed.
As if to drive the point home, when Lance met with The Source for this story, the interview was interrupted by the piercing cries of a kestrel at the window. Lance had raised the orphaned bird and, though it was no longer a resident at the sanctuary, it was in the habit of stopping by for lunch.
Lance opened her back door and the kestrel landed in the branches nearby. Most people only see this bird at a distance in the wild, hidden in a tree or swooping by in a streak. This kestrel came within only a few feet of us, hopping from one branch to another, crying for its meal. Lance admired the bird for a few seconds then produced a small piece of meat that she held above her head. The kestrel hesitated for just a moment, glancing between Lance and its meal. Then in an instant it swooped down, snatched the morsel from her grasp, and was gone.
“See?” Lance says with a smile. “This is how I get these pictures.”
“Affinity for Feathers’ opens on Friday, March 9th at the Maria Henle Studio at 55 Company Street in Christiansted. The show runs through April. The artists’ proceeds will go to the St. Croix Avian Sanctuary.
