BiographyPast Exhibitions
Available Works
25 Sep - 13 Oct 2001
This exhibition concerns a selection of animals, once common in Britain, and hunted to extinction even before an age when severe flooding can be partially blamed on a lack of land uncovered by tarmac, or housing. What initially interested me was the astounding lack of interest in, and ignorance about these beasts in a country famously obsessed by wildlife and animal welfare. Perhaps as we lead the cries of outrage about the lack of suitable tiger habitat, and the barbaric eastern predilection for ivory and endangered aphrodisiacs we would rather not be reminded that we have lost so many magnificent beasts ourselves. Perhaps in an age where so much interest is engendered by the television, our keen enthusiasm for the very visible and highly dramatic struggle for life in the African subcontinent is bound to take precedence over the largely hidden, often nocturnal and exceptionally wary forest dwelling beasts of our own historical past; tourists in the Serengeti can witness every intimate moment in the life of a lion pride from a bus, whereas in the primeval forests of eastern Europe even research scientists working with radio collared individuals are unlikely to gain more than rare fleeting glimpses of the wolf.
While no other European country has levels of extinction as high as our own, it is only in Poland and Bielarrusse that the full cast is still assembled, owing to the successful reintroduction of the European bison, after it was rescued from extinction, by pooling together the remaining twelve animals, and subsequent careful breeding programmes. Even the bison, over 6ft at the shoulders, is, like the wolf, beaver, bear, and wild boar, hard to find in the forest, and once disturbed, will usually melt rapidly away…..a better option than the rare charges; bison are surprising agile and capable of incredible short term speed. Of these five extraordinary mammals only the bear is a serious threat to man, and it was probably this, along with a taste for horse flesh that shortened the life of the bear in Britain. The beaver was hunted relentlessly for the warmth and water-repellent quality of its fur, particularly as headgear. The wild boar, quite apart from the destructive nature of its foraging activities and taste for crops, was soon in direct competition for woodland grazing with domestic swine, and the wolf has long been the subject of relentless persecution and public relations battles which continue to this day in those places where it has attempted comebacks….most recently in the Mercantour in south eastern France.
Becoming familiar with these beasts has taken a lot of patience, but has been endlessly rewarding. I realized early on in the quest that working entirely from the wild would be impossible….it was possible with a tracked to get relatively close to bison on horseback, but the audience granted seldom lasted more than a few minutes, and daylight sightings of boar and beaver are likewise fleeting and brief.
Even in captivity, wolves that are kept in large enclosures, maintain a natural wariness of man, though adolescent pups can suddenly surprise in their desire for play. Of all our lost beasts the wolf has been the most interesting to study, morphing seasonally from the magnificent heavily furred ice creature, to the rangy, spindle-tailed gangle of the summer. This ambivalent ability to encompass such contrast and diversity within one body runs through both the reality and myth of wolves; blood thirsty satanic vampire or nurturing mother to mowgli and romulus and remus? Savage killer or sophisticated social harmoniser? Watching the Polish wolves in the parc animalier de St. Lucie over a year and a half was far more interesting than big brother, but not dissimilar, and it is surely the close parallels with ourselves that are ultimately responsible for both the fear and the fascination.
As a painter it has been fascinating to search for images of these animals, and from the caves of prehistory to Anglo Saxon metalwork depicting the great sea eagles once so common on these islands, I have found a familiarity which is salutary. Bizarrely we appear to be more familiar with the North American, bison wolf, bear, beaver and eagle than we are with those that should be part of our own cultural, historical and biological heritage.
