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Russ Kaniuth is a native Californian and a father of four. His love of drawing goes back to when he was a toddler watching his grandmother paint while she babysat him. Since then, he has taught himself to draw and paint. His favorite subjects to draw have always been wildlife.

Russ learned to appreciate wildlife in their natural habitat from his father. His family traveled all over the United States and Canada allowing Russ to see and appreciate America’s wilderness firsthand.

Russ Spent many summers throughout his childhood in the Trinity Alps of Northern California. There, he studied and photographed wildlife every chance he got. Russ even volunteered at the local Fish & Game Department, where he learned to trap bears to provide medical aide and to tag them in order to study their migration patterns. Being able to be this close to these animals and to study the anatomy of bears helped him tremendously as an artist, thus giving him the ability to draw with a vision of greater detail and realism.

Russ grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he has followed and photographed the migration of several waterfowl that stop in the baylands and marshes all around the coastline of the San Francisco Bay. Drawing ducks and geese have always been a favorite, so Russ spends a lot of time taking his children on hikes through the marshlands and photographing the geese as they fly in.

While most people think that the San Francisco Bay Area is all concrete and steel, Russ has found its natural beauty in the beaches covering the coastline of the pacific, the mountains that run along the peninsula from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, and in all of the marshes and estuaries along the bay. The Bay Area is where Russ has always called home and where he can count on finding the beautiful wildlife that he photographs and draws.