Review: Society of Wildlife Artists 55th Annual Exhibition

The Natural Eye 2018 - Feature wall of the Annual Exhibition of Society of Wildlife Artists

I hate it when I've downloaded my thoughts about an exhibition onto paper - and then start to write the review and can't find the notes!  Written in the exhibition they're fresh and spontaneous. Trying to resurrect the thoughts after I've written them down does not always work...

Duh!

However I have now found my notes of my visit to the SWLA Exhibition last Friday - in my shopping bag in among the receipts and the evening paper from last Friday!  So that's the end of notes on paper and next time my formal red Exhibition Notes Moleskine is back in action as the repository of all my thoughts on an exhibition!

So what did I think?

View of the SWLA Exhibition in the Threadneedle gallery  featuring Old Man of the Woods, Bronze by Nick Bibby

Well first of all, the 2018 annual exhibition of the Society of Wildlife Artists at the Mall Galleries is emphatically not an exhibition of photorealistic artwork.

That's not to say detail is not observed or that technique is confined to the gestural as opposed to the precise.

Instead the emphasis is very much on seeing, observing over time and portraying the vitality of the wildlife in their natural habitat.

There is LOTS of emphasis on movement - particularly of sea birds. Indeed there are lots of very vigorous paintings in the Threadneedle space.

Paintings created from studies of birds at visits to Bass Rock and St Abb's Head Threadneedle Space

There's also a lot of emphasis on colour - although the works in the Threadneedle Space tended more towards the blue/grey cold end of the colour spectrum (see above) with warmer tones prevailing in the main gallery.  I like the fact that there is both complete truth about colour from some artists while others like to push the boundaries and make their art "pop" off the wall!

View of the Main Gallery

This year I particularly enjoyed the two very colourful collages produced by Carry Ackroyd - (Fox on the Prowl and Swans on the River) - on the end wall of the main gallery. (see top image)

Smaller prints in the North Gallery

There is a huge emphasis on wildlife found in the UK and Europe rather than "wildlife if Africa and Asia". the latter while present does not take over the show - with big cats and elephants everywhere.

Indeed where the wildlife from other countries is included this year I found it somewhat unusual. Hence the major exhibition of the Urban Black Kites of Delhi - which was very impressive.
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