Brian Chuchla – Bear Claw Studio

Where are you from?

Burbank, IL

What first drew you to art?

Standing at the Summit of Little Costilla in New Mexico

Tell me about your first pieces?

My first pieces were photos from a 2016 trip to Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. This trip was specifically to watch and photograph the bears at Brooks Falls. After the trip, I gave my brother and sister-in-law some prints.

Tell me about some of your other works. 

I love looking out at nature, whether that be landscapes or wildlife. Sometimes there is a perfect combination of them, but often one has to take center stage. Milky Way photography in the desert has been a fun pursuit, requiring the right location and conditions. By far the most popular have been pictures of waterfalls, specifically Horsetail Falls in Yosemite during the Firefall.

Who are your biggest artistic influences, and how have they shaped your style?

Dad and Uncle Tom. Dad always had his camera on vacations and was snapping away on the old Canon until the fateful canoe trip when it took a swim. While Dad never did more than print these for the family albums, it did start me down the path of photography. Uncle Tom took groups from the schools that he worked for to Quetico Provincial Park, north of the Boundary Waters. I was always amazed looking at his pictures after the trips, and eventually I was able to join him on the trip in 1998. We shared a great trip, and I realized that it was his pictures that gave me the small window into that part of the world. In 1999, standing at the peak of Little Costilla at sunrise and watching the world wake up below us, I decided I wanted to share these experiences and parts of the world with people who haven’t or can’t enjoy them themselves. I know the pictures are just a small representation of the beauty out there; maybe it is enough to get people to see it and want to experience it themselves. From that point, it has been a journey of acquiring equipment and traveling to share more of these beautiful views with others.

Is there a recurring symbol, form, or color that shows up in your work, and what does it mean to you?

Not specifically, though I do have thousands of pictures of bears. Nature and wildlife are amazing, just to sit in the woods, by a waterfall, or on the edge of a cliff and watch and listen to everything around you. To smell the woods and water, to feel the sun on your skin, to realize that you are just a tiny piece of all of the beauty and world around you. All of this truly brings warmth to my heart and a smile to my face, and I hope it might do the same for someone else.

What is your day job like, and does it have an impact on your art style? 

Working in Quality for a Pharmaceutical company in a production facility is a completely different experience. Some days I do not even see the sun until I leave work, so being in nature from before the sun rises until long after it sets is a complete 180 from a workday. This provides an escape and a romantic outlook on nature and the wilds beyond corporate America.

If you could collaborate with any artist, dead or alive, who would it be, and on what kind of project?

Ansel Adams. I would love to just talk about the process, how he sees things, and then capture them in a way he is happy with. I know I have been out to some of the same places and have looked at the same mountains, but I would love feedback and discussion on it all.