Painting wildlife direct from source was the topic of the first Coastwise session of the Autumn......

On Thursday 1st Oct, Coastwise members listened to a fascinating talk by Warren Collum, the curator of the Bideford Gallery on painting wildlife direct from nature. This was the first meeting of the Autumn programme.

The Gallery has been running an exhibition of work by a number of noted wildlife artists, and it became apprent that this was inspired by Warren's own enthusiasm for getting out in the open, building up knowledge of interesting animals and sites, and capturing his subjects in watercolour with no subsequent studio retouching. His talk and pictures covered nesting herons, adders and little owls, and the technical proficiency of his pictures and notebooks, allied to deep study and understanding of the subjects, was very impressive. Many members were inspired to get out there without a camera !

After the talk, members were able to look at the exhibition, which contained work by artists such as Talbot Kelly, Eric Ennion, John Busby and David Measures, with some interpretation by Warren.