Big Cats

Oils

PANTHERA ANNUNCIATA

SNOW LEOPARD HUNTING

WHITEOUT

TIGER IN THE SNOW

HUNTING TIGER

Out of the Darkness

AMUR TIGER HEAD

This is an intense life-size study of a snarling Amur Tiger.

I feel this large, majestic male is not really angry or fearful in any way. He is confidently, even effortlessly, holding his ground as he stares at you from an uncomfortably close vantage point! He looms out of the evening like a brilliant sun. What a challenge to put over, in paint, his awesome power, size and raw energy! Again, painting on this scale filled me with his very real presence, and to paint him life size was thrilling. I have concentrated on his head – it is really a portrait – his body recedes into the falling darkness.

CAT PASSION

In this painting the two Tigers are engaged in fierce love-making foreplay

When two tigers engage in their mating ritual, it is a brutal business. It is hard to distinguish from a fight between two males at times. The female initiates the aggression, the male is careful and comparatively tactful. But, before the actual mating, he will overpower her and sink his teeth into her neck – this is all a necessary part of her becoming receptive to him. The foreplay is noisy and takes place at lightning speed.

LION

I made this painting in watercolour to start with. But I realised that, only in oils, could the full power and strength of the male Lion be expressed. The colours would need to be strong and vivid to match his majesty. So, I began again in oils with, hopefully, good results. I am quite pleased with this image of LION. 

But, in some ways he speaks the same message as Apparition in the Himalayas, the Snow Leopard, who appears and disappears, like a ghost in the snow clad mountains, or ‘Out of the Darkness’, the Amur Leopard who emerges from the complete dark, but fearfully, might disappear back into it at any point. In this new painting, the Lion, also, is half in shadow. It could be the cool shadow of a tree, or, more sinisterly, it could bring to mind, metaphorically, the waiting fate for the Lion, if we don’t leap to its rescue.

Watercolour

TIGERS

These pre-mating fights are second- long explosions - literally a whirlwind of fire and sparks.

In the pre-mating skirmish, the female is the more aggressive. The male Tiger parries and waits his time.

The cats spin; the female, already off balance, will fall, and her calmer mate mate will take his prize.

Cheetahs

THE CHASE

I have been doing a series of Cheetah studies - drawings and watercolours. What cheetahs do best is to run - at speed! 

I have done a group of half a dozen drawings of cheetahs breaking the speed limit.  And here, on my website, are also my four latest watercolours of Cheetahs pursuing prey - both Thomson Gazelles and Impala

Both cheetahs and gazelles share an exquisite grace and beauty, and both predator and prey run, leap twist and turn, faster and more beautifully than any other animals on the planet, as they engage in a dance of death. 

These four paintings are studies of cats and gazelles at their extremes: the one hungry, possibly to feed her cubs, the other desperate to save its life. It is a fascinating paradox of horror and beauty to behold.

These studies have given me the opportunity to delve further into how to visually express the emotion aroused when we become excited by speed. And speed combined with agility and grace is particularly wondrous and captivating. I, like all artists from the beginnings of photography, have been influenced by the revelations of the camera, but I seek to go further still than what the camera can tell us about speed. I try to capture the  'force lines' and 'energy arcs' that underlie a burst of thrilling speed. It is an endless, hugely satisfying challenge.

LIONESS CLOSING IN ON HER PREY

As I painted this piglet, I was acutely in touch with the pain of sadness and sorrow for this young baby animal and his cruel end. In this painting, unusually, my feelings were strongly identified with the prey animal. This tiny vulnerable creature gasping his last breaths in this hopeless and fatal chase. The piglet is gawky and ugly compared to the glorious beauty of so many prey animals - the delicate Thomson and other Gazelles, for instance, whose grim but beautiful imminent deaths I have portrayed with an aesthetic pleasure, have, for some reason, not affected me as much as the little blue piglet.

TWO LIONS PLAY FIGHTING

No sadness in this joyous painting. I have tried to capture a truly lyrical fight - if two such words can possibly be juxtaposed. The Lions fight lazily, and even gracefully, in the hot sun, and its a happy evocation.

Unlike the majority of my paintings of Big Cats concerned with extreme action, here is a moment of peace, calm and tenderness.

Total focus on the fatal trip.

Four young dogs enjoying a game.

Original Artwork & Prints 

Please contact me if you are interested in purchasing the original artwork or requesting prints.

Further Works