I enjoy taking on commissions for people, helping them realise what they wish to capture whether it is a much loved landscape, animal, family house, or something to celebrate a special day. After listening carefully to what is wanted, I suggest ideas and explain what works best depending on the medium chosen. Then I make sure with updates that we are going in the right direction. It is very much a joint creation. Each commission is different and I prefer to discuss price after finding out exactly what is wanted. This will depend on the size, complexity and medium of the work.
My first commissions were shop signs, posters, programmes invitations, special anniversary cards and menus. Two large watercolours of the Thames were followed by a design which was printed on linen to help raise money for Venice in peril. Since then I have undertaken a wide range of work from small illustrations to large scale portraits of Flora and Fauna.
Flora & Fauna
I had a wonderful opportunity to study the animals and plants of the Island of Grenada in the West Indies during a commission to paint five paintings for the Calabash Hotel.
Mona Monkey. I first saw these amazing monkeys with their owl like faces in the Grand Etang National Park which is in centre of the island of Grenada. Originally these beautiful creatures came from western Africa, but were transported to the spice island on board slave ships during the 18th century. These ones live in the rain forest and can be enticed down if you have fruit to offer them. When they saw me and Susannah standing there with our bag of bananas they ran down a big rubber tree. However although delighted with the ripe ones they spat out an unripe one in disgust.
The Armadillo is a symbol of Grenada and in the background are the ginger lilies, heliconia, hibiscus and bamboo I saw in the rainforest. Among the fruit in the foreground is the cocoa and the nutmeg with its covering of mace, both very important crops for the island.
In the Garden of the Calabash are the long strands of Thumbergia which hang down and are visited by small hummingbirds in the early morning. In the distance you can see a traveller’s tree, as the branches are always full of water for the thirsty, also white egrets and the house cat with his damaged tail. In the front is the Aloe Vera plant which I have a great respect for as it got me back to full health after a bout of pneumonia and was also very helpful applied to the skin for mosquito bites!
Young Jaguars are not found in Grenada but I was asked to paint one and so I have placed him in one of the many calabash trees I saw there. Behind is a full moon peeping through the fronds of the palm trees.
The Song of The Dove shows the Grenada Dove which is critically endangered, there are only about 160 of these beautiful birds remaining on the island. The Painting is also about how the sea continues even though we cannot see past the line of the horizon, in the same way as life continues after death, although we cannot see or understand it from where we are standing.
cards were made of all these paintings and are still available.
Tiger Tiger, oil on canvas, 122 x 183 cm
This painting shows the Tiger at night with a mysterious temple in the distance. I was inspired by reading about the sanctuary at Rathambore and William Blake’s poem Tyger Tyger urging us not to loose that sense of awe towards the natural world of which we are all a part. I live quite close to Chessington zoo and they kindly let me in during the winter months so that I could work on studies there undisturbed.
During the mid 90’s I made several large paintings of Tigers and one was made into a card which was sold in aid of The International Trust for Nature Conservation (ITNC), a British registered charity which works to protect parts of the world where wildlife is threatened by human activities. I still have some of these cards and they are available along with the Grenada series. In early legends tigers are linked to man in many ways all with the main purpose of preventing disaster, regenerating life and providing balance, peace and fertility. iI was believed that the Tiger was the guardian of the Tree of Life and they were often found on large screens designed to protect the home and keep evil spirits away.
On the left of the painting is part of a banyan tree. Some of these trees are 800 years old and Tigers like to shelter near them. The future of trees and Tigers are closely intertwined and tigers will only survive if the forests survive. Unfortunately much of the forested land which was the Tigers habitat has been cleared and used for agriculture so there is an ever decreasing area in which they can live. Unlike Lions which hunt in groups the Tiger is on the whole solitary and each one needs a fair amount of space. There is still a lot of poaching because of the market for medicines derived from their body parts
Tigers hunt at night between dusk and dawn. They love water and will often sit in a pool to cool down when it is very hot. During the heat of the day they seek the shade of the trees. I see the Tiger as symbolising the very essence of life and his survival as an indicator of the health of our natural world.
Illustrations
The Garden of Eden was essentially a brief to paint a garden in Sussex which had many wildlife visitors. Of course each had their moment alone when they came, but the brief was to try to place them all in the same painting.
