ip
McGarry has a unique approach to painting wild animals which is the key
to his present position in the art world," says Lynn Burns, Head
of Wildlife Art at Christie's in London. "He catches the spirit of
the beast every time, and there is more depth in his paintings than the
simple two-dimensional plane. His fine painting of Persian Leopards in
our May sale was an example of this talent. There is now a frisson of
interest throughout the room when his paintings come up for auction."
Pip's success in the competitive world of British wildlife art could be argued as an inevitable triumph of heredity, for he is the son and grandson of artists on his mother's side of the family, but his career for the first 24 years of his life was hardly an indication of what was to follow.
A childhood in Malaysia and Belize laid the foundation of his lifelong interest in wildlife. His father's service career took the family to camps in the jungle and to the islands of Belize, and apart from learning to sketch wild animals, birds and fish, his boyhood memory stored up vignettes and wild places, discovered as he wandered with his siblings through an unspoilt world.
"We were a gang ? four boys and a girl ? wandering through the rubber plantations," he remembers. It was cool, quiet and dark in there; I remember little streams among the trees, with sunlight dappling the water. We used to swim in those rivers, and became a part of our environment.
"Later we moved to Belize, where we used to go out to the reefs to see brilliantly coloured fish and strange creatures of the sea bed. The insect life was exotic, butterflies were twice the size one ever saw in Britain, and humming birds enchanted us -- a quite wonderful world for a child with a sketchbook.
Later
Pip was flown out from boarding school for his holidays. Educated at a Catholic
boys' school in Hampshire, he admits that he never had any encouragement
to draw or paint, despite choosing History of Art for his A-levels. He was
already looking at famous paintings, sketching and painting in his spare
time, but incredibly, no one appears to have noticed. He used to copy Leonardo
da Vinci's dragons, and was fascinated by a picture he calls "the four
uglies", a group of 'drop-outs' in different poses in an immense Leonardo
canvas which he endlessly copied.
His job experience on leaving school was nothing if not
diverse. Clearly there was the need to earn money, and he progressed rapidly
through life as a farm labourer, a bricklayer and an accounts assistant,
followed by a short period of officer training in the Army -- a predictable
step for the son of an army officer, but one which was not to last as
he found the life of a peacetime infantryman too constricting. He became
a semi-professional footballer, and boxed for Andover Boxing Club. That
was followed by a job as a trainee draughtsman and a clerical clerk in
the benefits office -- one job he says he enjoyed, as he liked dealing
with people, a talent which has served him well in his art career.
Change Of Direction
It is hard not to feel that fate took a hand in things at this time in his life. In 1979, while working in Andover, he heard that David Shepherd was giving a lecture at a local hall on painting wildlife. Already an admirer of the artist, he hastened to buy a ticket, I was utterly enthralled," he says. "It changed my life. The very next day I went out and bought oil paints, borrowed an easel, and painted my first picture of a wild animal from a photograph I had taken out East. I never looked back. I knew what my future was going to be. 'I am free' 1 told myself. 'I have escaped'.
"Men
and animals have an inescapable link," he says. "In ancient
times man painted animals on the walls of caves. Today, with all the pressures
on the environment and with the knowledge that many wild animals are being
wiped out, many people who spent their working lives under fluorescent
lights in airconditioned offices will escape for holidays into the bush
in Africa, in order to see animals in their natural state. In 100 years'
time people will look at our paintings and say, 'Gosh! Those animals actually
existed then'.
Pip pays credit to Marwell Zoo, which gave his work a valuable base when he was allowed to paint their animals They soon appointed him resident artist. The Hampshire zoo is one of Britain s most beautifully situated zoo parks, where the game is kept in exceptionally spacious paddocks with purpose-built buildings, rocky hills for the 'big cats', woodland areas and lakes. A future project is to build 'an African bowl'on adjacent land presently unused, where plains animals will roam together over a vast area.
Different painting stages
He has conceived, planned and organised the Marwell Art Society, which has grown rapidly, proving an immediate success with around 200 members who take part in regular workshops for adults and children. By introducing fellow artists as extra tutors he has afforded pupils the benefit of experiencing different painting styles. The summer exhibition has become an important local event where many established artists as well as pupils exhibit. This year his two talented teenage daughters were among the exhibitors.
Although Marwell is still his base, he travels in Africa in the winter months, visiting Botswana, Zimbabwe and the Okavango Delta last autumn to sketch and photograph their wildlife. He travels with a good camera and his sketchbook. "I work from colour photos in my studio, backed up by detailed sketches," he says. "Using a camera is a touchy subject, but wild animals usually get up and walk away when you approach them -- and you can't go out in the bush and set up your easel! I also find colour photographs essential for capturing background detail and the unique colour of the African sky at a particular tirme of day.
In a good picture you should feel you could 'walk into it'. This requires much attention to composition. Light in a picture is all important -- it might be the bright light of that sunny day, the glint of an animal's eye, the gleam of a glossy coat, or the reflection of water. When painting any animal, the eye is the most important thing. If you get the eye wrong you spoil the painting. When you study an animal's eye it is a ball with depth and colour, it reflects light, and is surrounded by lids."
Materials and technique
I am often asked to explain how I paint the whiskers of the 'big cats'. I use a brush called a 'rigger' more often used in marine paintings for depicting the rigging of a sailing ship, a simple brush to obtain and to use, with long, thin hairs. It loads up a quantity of paint as long as you use it thin enough. I use titanium white mixed with turps; other types of white tend to be thicker and less workable."
He
uses Winsor & Newton oil paints, including a lot of black and white
paint which, he says, surprises everyone who has been through art school.
"I was aghast when three of my pupils said they had been taught never
to use black and another said she was told on no account to use white,"
he said. "Both are great mixing colours: I use ivory black with chrome
yellow, and get a wonderful green! And in fact I get through more black
paint in a year than any other colour."
"Gainsborough's use of blue when he painted his famous Blue Boy shocked the Establishment of his time because they believed one should not paint in blue -- it was not the done thing! He turned the tables on his fellow artists and painted one of the most famous portraits of his generation -- so I firmly believe one need not be so rigid!"
Pip McGarry's success is undoubted, he has a 100 per cent sale rate at Christie's, and his paintings are regularly reproduced as limited editions throughout the UK by De Montfort Fine Art. An evocative group painting of elephants beside a Kenya lake was sold three minutes after the opening of the Marwell summer exhibition. His portraiture of large animal groups in their African setting mark a new dimension of his work. It has taken 20 years of hard work to achieve what I feel is a reasonably high standard. As I never had any training I suppose I can say 'I have done it my way'.