Cows n Stuff

All of my originals and prints are hand signed and feature a monogram of a cow’s head which is created using the letters from my name.

The three prints George, Mildred and Ant n Dec which the UK's best publishers - Washington Green fine art released on box canvas last June have sold out at the publishers with a very limited availability in the galleries. It was an exciting development for me and I think they did a terrific job in reproducing everything so perfectly that even I have trouble telling them apart from an original!

For information about the new releases – Nosey Cow and How Now Brown Cow see the What’s New page on this site. As my new work is available exclusively from Washington Green and galleries which are supplied by them I have had to make changes to this site. It's mainly now a showcase so that you can see what I'm working on at the moment. There has been a bit of confusion regarding sales directly from the site so can I please stress that I can only sell the classic wildlife images which were painted before any involvement with Washington Green.

In January I was invited to Castle Galleries in York to spotlight a small collection of originals together with my print releases from last year. It was great to meet some collectors and answer questions about my work.

I was also asked to demonstrate my painting style at Castle Galleries in the House of Fraser store, Guildford at the end of March. The gallery staff had put on a fantastic show of originals and it was great to meet so many people and new customers. The painting I was working on, Don Juan is now completed and is shown above.

The cows around me are just about putting in an outside as it's been so very wet and cold. There's lots of ideas to paint so I'm just waiting for my models to arrive in the fields bathed in warm sunshine! I've painted lots of cows and sheep from my break to Northumberland last year including a coloured piece of a huge Limousin bull I spotted whilst driving past a field. "Beefalo Bill" was displayed at Guildford for the first time recently. I painted him the year before and now he has the company of two Limousin ladies so I hope there might be a calf or two next time. The owner of the lambs from last year informs me that all were delivered safely and there are five girls and a boy. They should make some fantastic paintings especially as they are all so tame...probably too tame sometimes!

It was a tough year for the agricultural shows with the weather and then the Foot and Mouth restrictions and so I didn't manage to photograph any Herefords so if anyone has any friendly ones that they wouldn't mind me meeting please get in touch.

I'm visiting Scotland for a week later this month so I'm hoping for some decent weather whilst I'm out and about "cow spotting"!

I exhibited two wildlife paintings at the National Exhibition of wildlife Art last July. I was fortunate to sell the piece below, Trail Blazer which was painted in oil on canvas. It is based on a couple of photographs by Nigel Dennis and the use of these has been approved by the photographer.

I also took part in the annual exhibition at Milnthorpe in Cumbria, "South Lakelands most prestigious open exhibition"which took place at the end of July selling two of the three pieces I entered. The painting of the peacock below is still for sale and it is painted from one of the collection at South Lakes wild Animal Park in Cumbria.

In addition I exhibited some classic wildlife paintings at the Art Exhibition in Cockerham, near Lancaster. One of the paintings I sold is shown below, “Intensity” depicted a lioness we came across one day in Kenya. She was very relaxed until suddenly aware of our presence and within seconds of her intense gaze it was very apparent just how potentially lethal these cats are.

I had a fantastic trip to Botswana in September 2004 with Pip McGarry, Halcyon and fellow Washington Green artist Wendy Corbett, artist and illustrator Kim Thompson and other wildlife artists to collect more reference and sketches. We visited the Okavango, Moremi Game Reserve, Savute and Chobe river area in Botswana and the Victoria Falls in Zambia. A couple of boat trips into the Okavango and Chobe river did provide some interesting encounters especially with an irate bull elephant who didn't take too kindly to being disturbed when bathing and a wealth of painting opportunities has presented itself. A particularly memorable moment for me was being at the start of a wild dog chase which was inadvertently captured on camcorder as I had unknowingly left it running as a terrified steinbok flashed past the vehicle with hunting dogs in hot pursuit.The dogs were found again by our very experienced tracker and driver although we were actually climbing the rocks at Gabaatsa Hills at the time! Never have wildlife artists descended such a rocky outcrop so quickly!

*Sketching at Savute*	*Leopard at Moremi*

Sri Lanka was a fantastic holiday and quite remarkable to see so many cows just wandering the roads and resting on the carriageway with traffic driving around them. There was even a cow using the zebra crossing..and the cars did stop which they didn't always for people! A trip to Borneo pencilled in for later this year has now been rescheduled for early 2009.