2009 International Birdfair, Rutland Water

It's almost Birdfair time again and as usual we are both running around
trying to get paintings, frames and printing finished! I will be taking along
a really nice selection of work this year, though I might find it hard to top the Gannets, which sold on the first day and attracted plenty of admirers.
Amongst them is this painting of two young peregrines about to leave the nest which is one of my favourites. I really enjoyed painting this, particularly the play of light on the warm rock of the quarry. it's a special piece.
I'll also have another gannet painting, though this one is a little more risque (!) - you will have to come to the fair or visit my website to see why!

There's also a lovely swallow, teal, gadwall and I may even have space for a couple of fish pieces.

The Birdfair runs from Friday 21st - Sunday 23rd August.

Photographing Kingfishers

My Wife Lisa was lucky enough to photograph this little beauty from the office window. He stuck around for at least half an hour, after the trout parr in our stream no doubt!
He's also been visiting our pond so I have set up my pop-up hide down there, along with a strategically placed perch, in the hopes that I will be able to photograph him there. Typically he came down yesterday whilst the two of us and the mad spaniel were down there feeding the roach. He stuck around in a nearby tree waiting for us to go, so I have high hopes of some lovely photographs in the coming weeks, as long as the weather stays fine.


Here's the hide
in all its glory.
Now to sit and wait!

Catch Up

At the moment I am just putting the finishing touches to my upcoming exhibition at Birdscapes which begins on the 30th November. I am very pleased with the paintings I will have on show and feel this will be one of my strongest exhibitions there to date.

I'll be away for a couple of days this week fishing for big pike on Chew Res. - wish me luck, if I catch a monster it will probably feature in my next painting!

We are also getting ready for our usual Christmas rush which, despite the credit crunch, is looking as if it will be as busy as ever. As you know we do try to process your prints as quickly as possible but do spare a thought for my poor wife Lisa who’s job it is to print, mount and pack your orders!

Underwater with Barbel

To this day I haven't had my anglers dreams of barbel fulfilled, having only caught one, but I have been blessed with beginners luck on my first serious attempt at diving with them. This was in the Hampshire Avon where I shared a classic overhanging willow swim with a group of large barbel, many into double figures. Andy Brown of Avon Angling, who knows the river well, had kindly baited up a swim for me over a period of a few days so when we arrived we found the water alive with barbel, drifting in and out of the shadow of a large willow, the occasional fish performing a feeding roll right over the baited area. Rarely have I kitted up in such a state of feverish anticipation and it was all I could do to stay calm enough to double-check my diving and camera kit before entering the water. When I finally did I was shocked at how cold the water was, but this was soon forgotten as the visibility was good and the prospects for great photographs very promising. I worked my was as slowly as I could bear towards the willow, trying to stay calm, keeping my breath steady so as not to send all the fish scattering up-river. Watching from the bank, Andy saw that at least half the shoal had done just that, but the remainder, as he has predicted, had sought the sanctuary of the willow.
The first I saw, clearly, spotlighted in the beam of my strobe light, was a brace of large fish, looking as shocked at my arrival as I was amazed at them. When I say large, they actually looked enormous - they were clearly ‘doubles’, and when you bear in mind that everything viewed underwater appears magnified by 30% and that these fish were only a couple of feet away, you can imagine how impressive they appeared. The fish were not quite as relaxed as barbel apparently can be, perhaps due to the relatively shallow water, and the bulk of the shoal had pushed their way into heavy cover. This was amongst the tangle of willow roots and branches which made photography difficult, as did the silt stirred up by such a concentration of big fish. It was simply awesome to view these beautiful creatures as such close quarters. At times, as I squeezed further under the cover, I had the flanks of double-figure fish within touching distance. After some time the fish began to settle to my presence and I chuckled into my regulator as a double-figure Hampshire Avon barbel, a fish of childhood dreams, started to feed within a foot of where I lay.
I have yet to return, but I hope that this is merely the first of many such encounters. The experience, probably the best of my dives with coarse fish, meant as much to me as catching a good barbel ever could, and somehow made up for my poor efforts with the species as an angler.

Diving With Puffins

My introduction to underwater bird watching took place on Skomer Island off the Pembrokeshire coast, and this is where I have done the vast majority of my work with sea birds. After a move to West Wales five years ago I soon started to visit this special place on a regular basis with fellow artists David Cowdry and Andrew Evans. It didn't take long for me to be drawn to the clear waters of North Haven and Dave and I were soon swimming amongst the great rafts of puffins, razorbills and guillemots. The puffin, which charms and amuses thousands of visitors to Skomer each year, can then be viewed as it transforms into an efficient underwater predator. The unlikely looking evolutionary success story that on land is a waddling comic becomes a graceful and powerful swimmer hunting down small fish. When you snorkel amongst puffins the comedy initially continues, their plump white bellies set off by those impossibly orange legs as they paddle to and fro, head dipping in the hunt for prey. They have all the appearance of a child's clockwork toy until, with a slight acceleration in their paddle and a lean forward, the birds dive, leaving a great silver trail of bubbles behind them. The puffins appear more buoyant than either the razorbills or guillemots and it always seems more of an effort for them to get beneath the surface. When a raft of birds dives in unison the effect is spectacular and marks the comics metamorphosis into the stars of an underwater ballet with the birds reflecting so much light that they appear to be lit from within.
Thanks to the generosity of the former Skomer warden Juan Brown and his partner Jane I have snorkelled in North Haven again and again and I don't think that I will ever tire of spending a bright summer day watching the auks do what they do best. After a good day in the water I drift off to sleep with my head filled with images, always in silvery light, and dream of painting six-foot canvases that will show people the wonder of it all.

New Web Site

My long-suffering wife is currently re-building my web site from scratch so it probably won't be up and running until the New Year. After many years sterling service we thought the old one was looking a bit tired and over-the-hill. Part of the re-vamp will involve moving my thoughts and musings on underwater fish and bird photography, diving and painting onto this blog...you have been warned!

The British Birdwatching Fair 2008

This year's Birdfair was my first as an exhibitor and we duly set up shop in the Art Marquee on Thursday afternoon which was, thankfully, rain-free as I had visions of the Somme as we left West Wales in torrential conditions.

It took us a while and a few tired and frayed nerves to dress the bare trellis and decide on where to hang the pictures but eventually we got somewhere with it!

As this was my first year I was afraid of getting lost in the crowd as the Bird Fair attracts some of the best bird artists in the country, so I decided to theme the stand early on - this year it was seabirds as I've done a lot work with gannets, guillemots and razorbills both on the Pembrokeshire coast and in Ireland over the past couple of years.

I was especially pleased with the Saltee's gannets (back wall right) which at 49 x 47 inches framed is one of my largest pieces to date. it looked lovely against the sea-blue wall and the hand finished framing I've been experimenting with really suited the painting.

I found the weekend really enjoyable though a little exhausting. Not only did the sun shine for most of the time but I met and chatted to lots of bird and art enthusiasts on the stand and had complimentary comments about my work (there is nothing so fragile as an artist's ego!). The other exhibitors were warm and friendly and always happy to lend a hand and I even managed to end up in profit by Sunday night.