Naturally speaking. Well I'm a wildlife artist, that's my profession and it has been for the past 30 years. So I'm in a really privileged position of spending all my time doing something I really love going out and exploring wild places and painting and sketching animals. Spending time on my own and then building up big paintings back in the studio.
But a couple of years ago you'll remember it was the Year of Boats in the Mediterranean and we also used costumes on beaches, on islands and off the coast of Greece and elsewhere. And there were people arriving on those shores saying absolute desperation and I looked at these and I could see places I visited whilst I was sketching and studying my greeting birds. And here were people living absolute survival mode and on exactly the same routes of flight as the birds I studied in the past. And I found that really compelling and I wanted to do something that referred to that and through that.
That's so interesting. I really like the connection of you there. So I know art depends on the eyes of the beholder of course but what was the message that you wanted to give out? Well I think about artists that it's not really a rational argument or a precise narrative in strength on the sciences and the subjective and intuitive.
And I hope that I can put together disparate imagery and experiences and convey something of that to the viewer. And there's a degree to which this is hard news and it's hard to hear sometimes. And if I'm producing something that is visually engaging and even attractive that draws people in and gets them to engage with the subject matter, then I'm hoping it can. In some instances it's kind of slip under the radar, slip under the defenses of some people and connect with them in an emotional way where perhaps they would have barriers to the story that I would otherwise be telling.
What did people think in the refugee camps when they were looking at you? Like what did they think about the art? Mostly people were just confused and perplexed by somebody who would be sitting a sketching really odd stuff like tents or flying through. But it was a good way to engage with people because I just had to sit down and then people would gravitate towards me.
I think if I'd been standing there taking photographs with a big camera it would have been entirely different dynamic and I purposefully didn't take photos in most of the places that I was travelling and doing that because it seemed too intrusive. And it created a very different interaction between me and the people that I was speaking to. Another thing was that I used my art in other ways. So in Jordan for example I volunteered at a refugee school and spent several days teaching art classes to the kids there.
And that was great fun and hugely interesting. In the jungle camp in Cali when I visited there just as it was being torn down. I did a series of art activities with a couple of the charities there. And it was really just to engage the unaccompanied children who were at the camp who were very weary of being contact with anyone official, including the charity where they were.
Including the charity workers. So I would do group activities that just drew people in to get involved. When they were engrossed in what they were doing in these small language groups that they found internationally. It was an opportunity for the charity workers to ask have you registered for the other camps.
Have you got do you need any medical attention? Do you need some more warm clothing? That kind of thing. Well life artists I guess your inspiration comes from.
Do you have any other social issues that are driving your work? Well in this project particularly I'm using birds as a repeated metaphor through the whole project. So I'm painting people and bits of the landscape but these pictures and images of birds appear again and again. Partly because there's a correlation of migration but also because really interested in the natural world.
I'm an enthusiastic amateur naturalist. And birds are important to biologists and ecologists because they're very good ecological indicators. Environmental indicators. And when something changes an environment then the behaviour and the phonology of bird behaviour changes as well.
And it can be seen very quickly. And one of the things I wanted to tie together was the research links between climate change. Stress on the environment and conflict which leads to environmental crisis which in turn creates this vicious circle. And that's why I'm using birds as the imagery in this project.
Well you seem to know a lot about the ecology of birds. Do you do research about the animal before you painted or do you focus on the external physiology of the animal? Well I'm often inspired by just seeing an animal or being in a place where I find out about it and then doing research and trying to understand it from all sorts of different angles. And I like the little bits and pieces of the kind of views of an animal might interlock so they might be a societal, they might be community, they might be expressed through different artistic forms.
But also the natural history of that creature as well. So in this project I've often borrowed little bits from folklore or from stories or song that are related to the birds that are in portray. But I'm also interested in the science behind the life cycle of these creatures. So I will research online and wherever else online so easy.
And I pulled together things which is interesting. As I said before this kind of basket of imagery and elements that are being together might not make sense as a kind of adjective narrative. But emotionally they can come together and create a strong message that connects with the viewer. So are you doing some of these research?
Could you tell us something about that? Well I've always been fascinated by wildlife and particularly birds. And when I was still at school I started burgeoning with a local rain group. And in UK a lot of the research on wild birds and particularly burgeoning is really kind of citizen science is done by amateurs.
And I've continued that interest and followed and tracked birds on the right migration through the UK up into the Arctic and down through the Mediterranean and into Africa. Which is the reason we came to the beginning of why I was so interested in this topic that brought together human migration and bird migration. And now I'm a chairman of the country's biggest streaming group, the T-ringing group. And we do projects that partner with academic institutions such as Glass University and conservation groups and research organisations across Europe.
But I particularly do study work looking at readbed birds and we do projects on things like water rail and barking project just now that is trying to work out where the water rails and the readbeds on the T go to the T-ringing group. And then where the birds that we have in the summer go to the winter. So we're just starting that next week. Good luck with that.
You said that you don't take photographs so it's not invasive for the people there. How can you draw a bird without taking a photograph of it? It will fly away in a second. So what I'm really interested in when I'm painting is that interplay between what you observe at the time and what you remember.
And as an artist, especially a representation artist, you are faced with something you want to paint to portray and shut it down on paper. And even if you go to a ball of fruit in front of you that's not moving, if you look at it, you go to look away. So drawing a bird flying across a field seems very difficult but it is just an extension to the x-degree of looking away from a ball of fruit and trying to remember what it was just practice and practice and practice. So I'm continually out in the field sketching animals and landscape and I've got a very good visual memory because of that.
And a very good understanding of the anatomy of particular birds. So I can see something very quickly under the shape of how it was moving and then play around with it on the page until it can make sense. And then I can see something very quickly and jot down a reference that I can then work up later. To portray this message and to give that imagery, I know there are different materials that you can use.
So do you think of the connotation of each other like oil paint, scalp cream? There are different mediums that have their own strengths. So sometimes it will be where they are used that are important. So a lot of the work I've done for this project has been done out in the field, so it's been field sketches.
And the only practical way of doing that was to have these A3 watercolor sketchbooks that are carried around with me. And I'm quite often just sit down and paint at some of these paintings were done as direct observations actually in transit points or in refugee camps, sometimes with a group of 10 or 20 refugee kids standing behind me asking, what are you doing? Just watching some producing this piece of artwork. Other work back in the studio has sometimes been inspired by a combination of colors that perhaps are best represented in oil paints or set of textures that we work better as collage and acrylic.
So it's quite spontaneous on how I decide to do something. And I've got a collection of pieces of work in this project which are collage and found objects which are then over paint. And these are put together from pieces of wood and material and discarded paper and clothing from transit points and landing areas and refugee camps that have just picked up and stuck in my pocket or in my rock sack as I've been travelling around. And then I've put these together back in the studio and they're assemblages that are put together from bits of material from different places and then brought into one little paint.
Great thinking that you want. So, thinking to the topic of materials, you have also written books, TV programmes and columns in magazines. How do this complement your art? So, that kind of published material tends to be very ancillary to what I do.
It's kind of a reportage on my practice. So my focus is always how can I spend as much time as possible painting and looking at the things that I want to paint as very selfish and very privileged way of living. But they have in themselves been great fun. I hate to be working on making television for consultation or producing radio programmes or writing books, but as standalone projects they are really interesting and very often great fun because you're working with teams of people creatively.
And that's always interesting and exciting and will quite often give you a different perspective on the way that you work, not least because when you have to describe what you're doing and in a sense justify it. It does make you examine how that sounds in the third person. So, as I said at the beginning, I'm the in-house artist of Natural Speaking and some art background myself. So, as an upcoming artist, I would like to ask you how do you become a successful artist?
Well, there's no straightforward answer because it's different for everybody else, but there are some common principles. And one is to work out what your practice is, what's your job if you like, what makes your work uniquely yours, and then just try everything. And what is successful, continue doing more of that. Things that you feel are not successful, do a bit less of that.
So, keep open to opportunities and to try different things and then just be absolutely determined that you're going to keep trying to do that, no matter how many constraints you have on your time or how difficult it is. Even if you don't feel you're getting success or recognition that you think perhaps you deserve, that's not something to worry about. Just focus on producing the work that you need to produce and getting it seen by as many people as possible. And that's the best advice I can give.
And one last question. So, what is something that you wished someone told you before becoming an artist about the career that you followed? Gosh, that's a really difficult question. That's a really good question.
Well done. So, I think one of the things which surprised me, and I do wish somebody had told me, was that it, and especially as an artist who makes a living from selling paintings. That's what I do. It's actually useful and successful not to sell all your work, but to be collecting artwork as you progress in your career.
That you can hold on to because I used to get concerned that I would have an exhibition and I would only sell half the paintings. I think I know I've only sold half the paintings. But if you have more paintings you can have more exhibitions, which means more people can see them. And then you will sell a certain percentage of them as well.
But it means that you can represent your work much more broadly and present it much more widely. And I found that in two community, ten years to really work that out, which is so crazy to me now. That's amazing advice. Thank you.
Well, perfect. Thank you for joining us, Derek. It was nice to have you here. You can find Derek's work on his website.
It will also be on the summary of the podcast. It will be www.creativehester.com. I'm Atlantic Christopher, and this has been Naturally Speaking Show. Thanks for listening to The Naturally Speaking Podcast.
If you've got any ideas for future shows or want to get involved, please contact us. We'd love to hear from you. Our email address is naturallyspeakingpodcast.com. Naturally Speaking is a podcast from the Institute of Diversity, Animal Health, and comparison medicine at the University of Glasgow.
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