Avocet

SOLD

Oil on linen, 105cm x 65cm

As a member of the Society of Wildlife Artists (SWLA) I was involved in a collaborative project with the RSPB on their new reserve, Wallasea Island, on the Essex coast. Created in part using the soil dug out to make London’s new Cross Rail  underground line, this new reserve changed from farmland to wetland in just four years. The scant wildlife of a farmland monoculture has been transformed into a cornucopia of birds, plants and animals that have arrived of their own accord, and the reserve now boasts over eighty pairs of breeding avocets – the emblem of the RSPB.

On a bright and hot June afternoon an avocet takes a break from feeding. There is always a breeze on the flat expanses of the Essex marshes and the bird has one leg tucked away to its body to regulate heat loss. I wanted to convey that sense of brilliant sunshine sparkling off the water, filling the shadows with light. Dead thistles, casualties of the recent flooding of the lagoon, provide upright contrasts to the horizontal bands of mud and water.

 

Select an original below

  • Redshank
  • Jewels of sunlight
  • Grey wagtail
  • Shallow waters
  • Snow charm
  • Snowy birches and ermine
  • Avocet
  • Moorhen and bulrushes
  • Melting away (snipe)
  • At the waterline
  • Winter fox
  • St Mary’s seals
  • The Gathering
  • Short-eared owl
  • Abernethy Forest pool
  • Redshank alarm
  • Evening pools – wigeon
  • Silver light
  • Aberlady Bay
  • Fishing in the flow tide – Little egret
  • Long-eared owl
  • Shrimping
  • Purple sandpipers
  • Morecambe Bay waders
  • Storm surge – gannets at Bamburgh
  • Sandpiper flight
  • Lindisfarne Bay
  • Heading north – migrating dunlin
  • Redshank
  • Against the light
  • Spring tide
  • Marsh grass
  • Warming up
  • Snow petrel
  • Smiling at the sun (rock martins at Abu Simbel)
  • Salt marsh sentinel
  • Making waves
  • Log pile
  • The sand martin and the jellyfish
  • Humpbacks in the Gerlache Strait
  • Dipper
  • Beachcombers
  • Run-off

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