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A Day at the Zoo

This solo show of paintings was the outcome of a three year residency at London Zoo.

Initially the residency was planned to focus on painting the architecture and business of the zoo. However it was the prospect of working directly with the zoo animals that became the central focus of the work; building upon my previous, extensive figurative body of work.

The residency gave me a unique opportunity to have a singular relationship with these animals. When large groups of people are staring at them, the animals withdraw to different parts of the enclosure. At times when I was there when it was quiet and when drawing them and staring at them there were moments of eye contact and a kind of intimacy emerged which I was exploring through the paintings. I wanted to see if it was possible to make a contemporary serious painting of an animal, without sentiment. I wanted the paintings to investigate the harmony between sensuality and reason, between the changing surface movements of the animals – their skin, their feathers, their eyes, and their paws – and the permanent laws of their inner structure. The skin moves in one way, the feathers move in one way and then there’s the inner structure of their skeleton. I was exploring the animal’s complicated movements and the effect they have on the world.

As well as the exhibition at Connaught Brown Gallery; reproductions of the paintings were installed outside the animal enclosures at the zoo itself for the duration of the exhibition.