A welcome break - the 50th SWLA exhibition

Last Sunday I had a welcome break from the current commission I am working on.  We ventured up to London with the specific aim of visiting the Society of Wildlife Artists Exhibition at the Mall Galleries entitled The Natural Eye.

Katherine Tyrrell has written a couple of great blogposts about the exhibition on her Making a Mark blog.  They can be found at: http://makingamark.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/review-50th-annual-exhibition-society.html and http://makingamark.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/if-you-want-lot-of-people-at-private-view.html

This exhibition has really had an impact on me.  Many wildlife art portraits are very photo-realistic, as Katherine mentions on her blog.  The work produced is still often stunning, but it is now that I realise at times something is missing.  I will share thoughts about this further on.

It was such a refreshing exhibition and it was a treat to walk into a wildlife art exhibition and not be overwhelmed by a selection of big cat paintings.  This made me think of when I exhibited with another well known wildlife art society a few years ago.  My painting of a Hazel Dormouse was surrounded and somewhat overwhelmed, by paintings of rather exotic species in all different shapes and sizes. 

I am digressing.  I wanted to share with you a few images from the exhibition, that caught my attention and why they appealed to me.  I took these images personally, so therefore the copyright of them remains with me, but copyright of the actual artwork depicted remains with the artist.  Any thoughts and opinions I express are purely my own.

Brin Edwards - left: Assington Waxwings, Seven of Fifty-seven
right: Barn Owl hunting.  Oil
Brin's work has such an amazing quality to it.  I had previously seen it at the New Naturalists Collectors Club Symposium.
These two pieces had such vibrant colours. so much energy and the picture on the left almost had a stained-glass window effect.

 

 

As a novice print-maker I always love coming to this exhibition to see the variety of prints and especially those produced from lino-cuts.  These two by Chris Sinden top: Bullfinches, bottom: In amongst the stubble, had some lovely colour qualities to them.  I was attracted to the soft, almost pastel shades used, particularly in the Bullfinch print. 

 

These paintings by John Foker, top: Blue Streak, middle: Nettlemonger, bottom: Lammas Kingfisher - oils.  Show me how effective small paintings can be in portraying a lot of information.

In one of the gallery's side rooms was a series of works entitled 'Out of the Frame' by three member artists.  The drawing and paintings were as a result of fieldwork from selected projects.
The sketches above are by Michael Warren, who has been visiting the same site for nearly 25 years to record the various bird species and other wildlife found there.  The site itself has been used for gravel extraction and new habitats are gradually evolving as the operations on the site become reduced.
These were just a selection of the drawings and to me they really show what good fieldwork is all about and what excellent observational skills Michael has.
 

As I came to the end of viewing the exhibition, I sat in one of the side rooms and felt compelled to write in my notebook words that summed up the exhibition to me.  Some of these words / descriptions are what I feel are sometimes missing in work that has a more photo-realistic approach.

 

Windows

The majority of artwork made me feel that I was looking through a window into the animal's life.  It almost gave me a feeling of privilege, similar at times to when I have been observing wildlife, either birding or when completing surveys.

 

Spirit, movement, life

So much of the animal's spirit, movement and life was shown in these works of art.

 

Passion

The passion of the artist really showed in these pictures and the individuality of the different artist's media and methods.

 

Higher value

I was left hoping that people viewing this exhibition that perhaps didn't have such a wide ranging knowledge of wildlife, would go away giving a higher value (morally and from a conservation perspective) to the animals they have seen portrayed, perhaps even those that are less well known.  This in turn leads me onto the next words I jotted down - awareness raising.

 

Story, narrative

So many of the pictures and sculptures had a very strong narrative to them.  Telling me the story of the animal's life / existence.

 

For those of you that will be in and around London this coming weekend, there is still the chance to see the exhibition at the Mall Galleries until Sunday 10th November.  The gallery is open 10am - 5pm on Saturday and the exhibition closes at 1pm on Sunday.