Art, Natural History

Wildlife Art

Well to be honest I was a bit suspicious about going to an exhibition of wildlife art: was it all going to be twee pictures of robins and blue tits painted rather too carefully to show all the distinguishing features? White horses galloping on the beach under moonlight, minus the horses, beach, and moonlight, in fact. It wasn’t terribly enticing. However, Tara had a work in the show so I thought I’d go and take a look. She doesn’t do twee birds in over-careful acrylics: she burns images of insects into pieces of wood (pyrography – the Greek means ‘writing with fire’), definitely different.

Tara’s signboard a few years ago when she was studying
A detail of Tara’s piece in the exhibition: Garden Spider. I guess you can see why I like it: it’s bold, fearless, marvellously detailed, accurate, burnt into the wood (lime wood in this case), and … definitely not in the twee robins for Christmas category.

Well, what about the other artists? Too many to mention, but here are a few that caught my eye.

Ben Woodhams’ funky Eider Ducks … definitely birds, certainly watercolour, but not twee at all. Good strong work. And quite a lot of real animal behaviour in there, too.
Christine Howes’ marvellous linocut of a Winter Wheatfield. Its restrained palette and marvellously strong swift aerobatic crows, and that wind-blasted bare tree contrasting with the blocky stones and the striped field make this a genuine work of art, not limited to any special category. Sorry about the reflections, that was my fault with the gallery lighting.
Sarah Rhiannon’s fine charcoal drawing of an African Wild Dog, titled ‘Wild Gaze’. She’s certainly captured quite a stare from that animal. Cute robins and blue tits? Forget it!
Richard Allen’s well-crafted linocut of a Red Kite. I guess I like monochrome, and the discipline of the medium: you can’t fuss about with a linocut or woodcut, and you have to get it right first time, no fumbling. Allen has created a vigorous design of the haughty raptor sailing past those puffy white clouds and over that far-below landscape where humans must live and work, earthbound.
Jill Moger’s splendidly executed stoneware ceramic of a Dwarf Tegu. Now ceramic animals … that’s difficult to do well. Twee is easy; so is naff; so is childlike clumsiness. Getting a realistic and watchful pose, as if the beast was just about to lunge for a fly or run from a predator, that’s impressive.
Casey Nadine Banwell’s Pangolin in cold-cast bronze. This is a pretty big sculpture, I guess life-size. The artist has captured the animal’s defensive behaviour marvellously, and its cautious gaze. The material’s natural colour and its resinous look seem to me just right for the subject.
Iain Nutting’s Thinking Gorilla in Corten steel. The unyielding material has allowed the artist to create an almost Cubist portrait of the animal. I’d love to tell you it was life-size, but it was about the same size as the Pangolin. Still, funkiness index 10/10. Twee Robins and Blue Tits index, nul point. Thank goodness!
Juan de Souza’s field sketch of Southern Elephant Seals: unmistakably dangerous wild animals, beautifully observed. De Souza spent months sitting on a windy Argentine beach sketching and drawing. You can almost hear the roaring.