Such are the observations that filter through the galleries during Tom Palmore's exhibitions in which animals steal the show.

Born in Ada and living in Oklahoma, Palmore emerged from the 1970s Photorealist movement as a maverick. His career includes more than a decade on the East Coast, where he refined his skills at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and exhibited in New York's prominent contemporary galleries. Palmore used his technical virtuosity to explore his passion for the animal kingdom. Then as today, his monumental paintings received critical acclaim, and his incongruous juxtapositions of realistic primates in silk-and-velvet interiors earned him the nickname Gorilla Man.

Palmore's fidelity to an animal's visage is intended to make it proud. However, the contexts in which he places them are pure Palmore, infused with his penchant for wit and the unexpected. His portrait of Oscar, the famed rodeo bull, is set against Palmore-designed wallpaper of cowboys catapulted into the air. A rooster surveys its Grant Wood countryside, and an imposing lion is oblivious to the diminutive monarch butterfly that shares its epithet. In all cases, Palmore's paintings loom large not only in scale but also in raised consciousness of the "earthlings with whom we share this planet," as he says.

Late Harvest juxtaposes contemporary art made with taxidermy with historically significant wildlife paintin gs, resulting in intriguing parallels and startling aesthetic aesthetic contrasts. The publication seeks to simultaneously confirm — through historically - significant wildlife paintings — and subvert — through contemporary art and photography — viewers’ preconcepti ons of the place of animals in culture. The richly illustrated catalogue will feature artists as: Richard Ansdell, David Brooks, George Browne, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Petah Coyne, Raymond Ching, Kate Clark, Wim Delvoye, Mark Dion, Elmgreen & Dragset, Carle e Fernandez, Richard Friese, François Furet, Nicholas Galanin, George Bouverie Goddard, Damien Hirst, William Hollywood, Idiots (Afke Golsteijn and Floris Bakker), Alfred Kowalski, Robert Kuhn , Wilhelm Kuhnert, Bruno Liljefors, Polly Morgan, John Newsom, T im Noble and Sue Webster, Walter Robinson, George Rotig, Carl Rungius, Yinka Shonibare MBE, David Shrigley, Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson, Amy Stein, Archibald Thorburn, Mary Tsiongas, Joseph Wolf, Brigitte Zieger, Andrew Zuckerman The exhibition Late Harvest is organized by the Nevada Museum of Art in consultation with the National Museum of Wildlife Art. It is curated by JoAnne Northrup, Director of Contemporary Art Initiatives, together with consulting curator Adam Duncan Harris, Ph.D., Petersen Curator of Art & Research, National Museum of Wildlife Art.