British artist completes series of pet portraits

A British artist has just completed a series of pet portraits.

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Award winning wildlife artist Paul Matthews from Puddletown near Dorchester, Dorset, has produced a painting of Merlin, a border collie, Louis, a boxer and Henry, a Jack Russell. “Unfortunately, Merlin has now died and so my painting is a good way for his owners to remember him,” explains Paul, a finalist in the BBC Wildlife Artist of the Year and holder of the prestigious Chester Zoo Award for his painting of a chimpanzee. “Henry is my latest portrait and is still wet!” Paul has painted and drawn since he was small and in August 2011 he chose a career as a full time artist, painting wildlife and portraiture from his home in rural Dorset. He paints contemporary wildlife paintings, where the subject takes centre stage and the mood is set by light and shade. References are collected from life by sketching and photographing in the field both at home and abroad. Recently Paul travelled to the Okavango Delta in North Botswana and has previously visited Kenya and Tanzania. Paul’s work attracted wide acclaim in the summer of 2012, when he was a finalist in the David Shepherd Foundation’s competition for Wildlife Artist of the Year. His picture, ‘The Passenger’, selected ahead of thousands of entries from all over the world received ‘Public’s choice award’ at The Mall Galleries, London. Almost simultaneously Paul was in the final of the BBC Wildlife Artist of the Year competition, receiving runner up in the Frozen Planet section with his polar bear portrait. This was the fourth year Paul was shortlisted for the final of the BBC competition, since its inception in 2008. You can see Paul’s work online, at various galleries across Dorset and beyond. A 2017 calendar of Paul’s fabulous paintings is being published by www.creativecoverage.co.uk, which represents selected professional artists and craftspeople including Paul.

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