Dire Wolves // Tar Pits - 36" x 24"

Downtown Los Angeles happens to be home to one of the most significant fossil deposits ever recorded: a massive assemblage of late-Pleistocene animals has spent tens of thousands of years churning in the sticky black asphalt that claimed their lives so many eons ago. Dire wolves (yes, they were a real thing) are some of the most commonly found fossils in the tar pits, and the Museum at La Brea has displayed dozens of their skulls on a brightly lit orange background – it’s one of the most striking installations I’ve seen (check it out here.)

I filmed with a few of La Brea’s scientists for a PBS Digital Studios episode, The Mystery of Earth’s Disappearing Giants, to learn more about how our planet has changed within the last however many millennia.

This painting touches on ideas about individualism and the inconclusiveness of paleontology. What happened to the megafauna, and what evidence will be left about the rapid domestication of dogs in front of the background of disappearing wildlife and shrinking natural spaces?

Prints of this painting are available.