“My desk is in the Review Studios in Kansas City, MO. This is where I mix all my paint. It is in the center of my studio. It’s a sacred place.”

Davin Watne is an artist based in Kansas City with an established record of professional achievement. He has been awarded several grants and public art commissions. His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Davin is currently a resident at the Review Studios Program in Kansas City and an adjunct professor in 2D design and multi-media at UMKC.

FROM YOUR DESKS: I’ve had so many close calls with deer, to the point you can almost feel the breeze of the animal. It’s exhilarating. I assume everyone has a deer story. Have you ever made contact?

DAVIN WATNE: Well, I have hit several deer in my life time it’s something that a lot of people have experienced. I see the incident as this metaphor for the greater collision between man and nature. The conflicting trends of urban sprawl, wildlife conservation and the loss of major natural predators have created a real problem of whitetail deer population. We have seen this locally with the Shawnee Mission Park deer problem, where they had to open it up to hunting.

FYD: Man versus Nature. It seems like the animals are dying. Who wins?  

DW: Great question after reading the book “The World Without Us” I think nature will. In the short-term humans will win, in the long-term nature will. It will take a long time for nature to come back but it does. There are examples in Chernobyl and the Bikini Atoll where humans have left because of radiation, but wildlife has come back and thrived. What wildlife needs to thrive is our absence.

What wildlife needs to thrive is our absence.

FYD: Deer are so innocent yet amazingly destructive. What do you make of them?

DW: Deer are incredibly beautiful. They are often most people’s “experience” of nature. When we see one we are often surprised and quieted. There is such a history of its use as a symbol in art. In this country deer mean different things to different demographics. I’m thinking of the hunters in the Cabelas crowd to the urban, yoga, coffee shop crowd deer are going to symbolize different things.

In reality deer in this region are a major source of food for a lot of wildlife. They are like the cows of the wild. I think they are an entry point for our association of what “wild” means or represents. Unfortunately deer have become such a trend in art in the past five years I can’t stand it. It’s potency as a symbol of what is “wild” has been so diluted.