Delighted to have won the Vittorio Zanetti Award at the Bruton Art Society Annual Show
Looking forward to exhibiting at the Bruton Art Society annual exhibition from August 21 - 28
Some of us really need to move on from thinking that baiting a hook, jerking it into the mouth of a migrating shark and then reeling it in for hours is an admirable thing to do. Compounding this by catching a Thresher shark that the IUCN Red List rate as Vulnerable (just one grade lower than an Indian tiger) and dragging it onto your specially hired boat to take Facebook-bragging pictures is pretty mindless.
The days of us being overrun with fauna that needs culling or just bagging as a trophy are long gone. We have decimated all wildlife on the planet. But sharks are taking one of the biggest hits: a 71% decline from 1970 to 2018.
I know nothing of the psychology of hunting, but in today’s nature-depleted world the need to show how strong or brave you are against an increasingly rare creature is very suspect. If you want to exude toughness join a cage fighting club where at least the opposition knows what the deal is.
I also know nothing about fishing, but I’m pretty sure this particular bloodied shark was dead, or was about to be, once the photo-op finished and it was given its freedom by being lobbed back over the side of the boat. It had, after all, put up an admirably strong, long fight. In this case there was lots of online fuss was about catch and release semantics. Apparently it would have been OK to exhaust the fish in a near death fight as long as the fisherman took the hook out at the side of the boat rather than dragging it onto the deck. Come on, we’re fooling ourselves. According to sharktrust.org “While ‘catch and release’ has long been the ethos for shark anglers, new research is revealing concerning rates of post-release mortality for a number of species. This is due to internal and external injuries, as well as physiological stress which can occur when a shark is played, handled and released.”
Just because "It's what we've always done. It's a tradition," doesn't mean we should carry on. There are all sorts of things we humans shamefully got up to, but through education and enlightenment we have stopped. Catching wildlife for fun, endangered or not really needs to stop.
Well done to Blue Planet Society @Seasaver for highlighting this story.
Please watch this hour long documentary Rivercide on the shameful state of our rivers. There's some shocking news in it which is hard to take, but it's really important we tackle this problem. Please sign this petition: https://riveractionuk.com/Campaigns/give-us-back-our-rivers/
This handsome team of rams are the driving force behind Orchid Meadow organic sheep farm that we back onto. They are a good looking bunch, but in all this hot weather they've taken to gathering in the shade of the trees just feet away from my studio. When I have the windows open in all this heat there's a permanent pungent, virile male, goaty smell in my workspace. And it's not coming from me. The boys also have a disconcertedly human cough that sounds like a 7ft bricklayer just clearing his throat. It makes me jump every time.……But we wouldn't want them any other way would we.
Massive to thanks to This is Alfred the news source around here, for the interview today about London, Antarctica, paint and gloves
I'm in shock that my watercolour 'Antarctica, Waiting. An apology' has won Best in Show at the
Society of Graphic Fine Art
exhibition in the
Mall Galleries
, London. The selector, Philip Athill of
Abbott and Holder
kindly said "Atmosphere conveyed by beautiful nuanced understanding of washes". I am particularly pleased that the painting has been highlighted as the subject is of massive importance to me (and us). Here's an explanation:
I was lucky enough to go to Antartica. This view shows moulting juvenile penguins waiting for their parents to return and feed them just-caught krill. In recent years penguins that wouldn't have been suited to breeding on the Antarctica Peninsula are now nesting in large numbers due to warming temperatures.
The year before I visited more than a third of penguin chicks on the islands died of starvation. In the same area trawlers were ‘suction' harvesting krill, a tiny crustacean, for our increasing demand for omega 3 food supplements and fish farm food. Scientists believe that with less krill in the area, less food was available to the birds. Fewer surviving penguins means less prey for seals and orca.
These are the words written into the background of the painting:
If the predictions were right this sight, my first glimpse of frozen Antarctica, has completely changed. Even by 2020 the peninsula was 5.5˚ warmer than in the 1950s. I can't imagine what it's like now. I'm sorry, but there weren't enough of us willing to adapt our lives to prevent the planet heating up as it has. We stumbled on, voting for politicians who denied what was happening. Many of them wilfully blocked any change for decades, even though the evidence of the damage we were doing was clear. Millions of us turned a blind eye to our knowing destruction of Earth so that we could lead comfortable and profligate lives, even though we knew that you, in the future, would have to pay for our selfishness.
Many thanks to Daler Rowney for their sponsorship of the award. The show closes on Sunday July 11 at 1pm
It's a four year application process, which uses a lot of paint, but I am delighted to say I have been selected to become a member of the
Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours
(RI). It has been a long-held ambition to join this amazing group founded in 1831. I feel inspired by the vote of confidence and hope I can keep up with the pace of the brilliantly-talented members whose work I so admire.
Get yourself to Messums Wiltshire from July 17 to September 5 for What Listening Knows. The new Leber & Chesworth installation is going to be great. I wrote about it in Resurgence & Ecologist here . Subscriptions to the lovely magazine are here