Kimberly Wurster talks about her watercolor and pastel exhibit “Images of Nature,” which opens today at the Coos Art Museum, on Tuesday. Her work will be in the upstairs Uno E. Richter Atrium Gallery through June 28. The Coquille artist likes to create works of art with local birds, both big and small, in their natural settings. World Photo by Lou Sennick

COOS BAY — The wait is over.

Throughout fall 2006, anyone who visited the Coos Art Museum’s Biennial exhibit had the opportunity to vote for a People’s Choice award, the prize for which would be a solo exhibit at the museum. There were 96 Oregon artists represented in the exhibit.

To no one’s surprise, the voters picked Kimberly Wurster of Coquille, who quickly became one of the South Coast’s most popular artists after winning two competitions at the museum in 2005 — the Bay Area Artists Association’s Regional Juried Show and Expressions West, the annual painting competition for artists in the western states.

Now, 18 months since the opening of the Biennial, viewers can return to see their reward: “Images of Nature,” a collection of 23 recent paintings by Wurster, opening today at the museum in downtown Coos Bay.

It took some time for the artist to accumulate so many paintings, especially when she sells them almost as fast as she makes them — sometimes to buyers who haven’t even seen their purchases.

Working mainly with watercolors and pastels, Wurster said she created about 10 new pieces for an exhibit last fall at the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, and she has been working furiously since December to create more works for the museum — completing about one painting every 12 days.

For an artist who specializes in birds, the result of that flurry of activity is enough birds to populate an aviary — in this case, the museum’s Uno Richter Atrium.

“I love birds,” Wurster said during the installation of the exhibit Tuesday. “It’s amazing I get anything done — I have binoculars in almost every window of the house.”

Wurster said she likes to paint only things that she has seen personally, and a large part of her work is collecting reference material — taking pictures of birds. She said she tries to carry a camera always, though the high-powered lens she uses isn’t something you can drop in a pocket or a purse.

Gathering reference material is important, she said, because details like feathers, foliage and time of year are very significant to the birders who make up much of her clientele.

Though she’s spotted 45 species of birds on her property in Coquille, she’s always on the lookout for more, often stopping while driving to get pictures of birds — or landscapes, when the lighting catches her eye. Coquille-area drivers have gotten used to seeing the trim, blond woman standing precariously on her truck or on a guardrail as she strives to get a good view.

“I nearly fell out of the truck trying to get that shot,” Wurster said, pointing to “A Watchful Eye,” featuring a kestrel she saw on state Highway 42S.

Looking out the windows of cars is something Wurster, 45, has been doing all her life. Growing up in Western Montana, Wurster said her parents wouldn’t let her bring activity books or toys to occupy her lengthy time in the back seat as they traversed Montana’s open roads, leaving her to contemplate the beautiful scenery.

But it was another sense that stimulated her love of birds.

“(It’s) the sounds, the songs,” Wurster said. “I’m a musician. It so lifts my spirits to hear them. … I’m fortunate to be able to put my love of them into a composition.”

Before moving to Oregon and beginning to paint in 1995, Wurster was a classical cellist and developed wildlife preserves for waterfowl in Montana with her husband, Scott. She said that more than 100 notes have been detected in the song of the winter wren, a tiny bird she often hears at home.

Among birds depicted in the exhibit are a green heron, a juvenile brown creeper and a ruby-crowned kinglet, which was juried as a finalist in The Artist’s Magazine’s 2007 competition, which received about 12,000 submissions internationally.

There are stories about all the birds in the exhibit, which Wurster likely will be telling at the opening reception, from 5 to 7 p.m. next Friday, April 25, coinciding with the opening of Expressions West 2008. Both exhibits run through June 28, but Wurster’s work will travel afterward for exhibits at the Emerald Arts Center in Springfield in August and at Strand Hall at Oregon State University for September and October.

One of the last works completed is the only acrylic in the exhibit, “Raptor.” It features a red-shouldered hawk, which Wurster said was watching ducks at a Coquille pond, contemplating supper. Like many of her paintings, Wurster said there was a lot of detail in the scene she chose to leave out.

“I can paint every feather if I want to, but I wanted to capture his attitude, his presence,” she said. “Sometimes you need to do what feels right.”

In another instance, with “First Light,” Wurster decided to leave out some of the things she originally liked about a photo of a great blue heron — water in the background, light catching the vegetation — because they took attention away from the bird.

“It’s important to be flexible, to listen,” she said. “If you have a feeling that it needs to go in a different direction, it’s good to heed that.”

Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday. Admission is $5.