My wildlife art always starts life in the neglected corners of our towns and cities where the natural force of weathering gets to work on made-man surfaces. It produces some wonderful details of intricate patterning with subtle textures and tones. Think of rust and cracked paintwork. I then photograph it and use Photoshop to finish what the weathering started by adding wildlife to create scenes of the natural world. I see it as a kind of re-wilding.
"Rusting Coral Reef" - made from a photograph of a rusty corrugated metal sheet. This one is unusual for me as I usually only add silhouettes of wildlife but here I used silhouettes of coral as well as the fish. I know coral is actually animal and therefore wildlife but they do feel more like plants.
"Perched Crow" - made from another photograph of corrugated metal but less rust and more flaky paintwork this time. I love the simplicity of adding just a single animal to create a scene and, of course, the background doesn't have to look like anything particular, it can just be suggestive of a vaguely natural-looking habitat.
"Snake Catcher" - a pond-heron holding a small snake in its beak in a background of a weathered old wall, slightly flaky, slightly cracked. This one has a secluded, intimate feel about it. The sort of sight where you come around a corner and freeze, wishing you hadn't just put your camera away!
"Great Dusky Swifts" - not a bird that gets a lot of attention but they have the wonderful habit of nesting behind the curtain of water at some of South America's great waterfalls. A very safe place (if you can get there). The colours of this worn and flaky paintwork seemed just right for them.
"Songbird Weathered" - the scratched, cracked paintwork on this rusty metal became a thicket for a singing bird to perform in seclusion.
"Startled Deer" - this old wall was not a promising background at first but I think it worked out very nicely. It's a story where you can't see how it began (what startled these deer?) and you don't know how it ends (what are they jumping into?). It has tension and is also dynamic which is a great combination for me.
