Category Archives: Exhibitions

The Natural Eye 2024

The Natural Eye is the annual exhibition of the Society of Wildlife Artists, held at the prestigious Mall Galleries in London in October. The show has over 400 works by more than a hundred artists inspired by the natural world. I have eight pieces on show.

This Long-tailed Tit was very difficult to make due to its size and the need to keep the original colour on the found objects.

I was thrilled and honoured to receive the BirdWatch and Swarovski Optik Artist of the Year Award for my Calling Raven. I am so grateful to the sponsors and judges, and look forward to making use of my new Swarovski spotting scope.

Another calling bird, Calling Curlew was inspired by seeing and hearing a few pairs on the farmland near my home.

The Flying Nightjar was inspired after I was lucky enough to see excellent views of displaying males at dusk in the summer. There were several pairs in one patch of clear fell forest, which seemed to encourage much earlier activity from the territorial males of this nocturnal bird.

My selection of sculptures are not all birds though, I had a lot of fun making Mattock Backed Sea Turtle.

I enjoyed making a perch. The stripes on the body and the upright dorsal fin really plays to my materials. I was pleased to get it to balance on the pelvic fins.

Itchy Nose, a study of a hare grooming itself and Chain Tawny Owl completed my selection of pieces.

The Natural Eye 2023

The Natural Eye exhibition at Mall Galleries is the annual show for the Society of Wildlife Artists. I always try to make a variety of pieces to celebrate the natural world. 2023 is the sixtieth anniversary of the SWLA.

Shear Capercaillie was the first piece that I made after an enforced leave from the studio of a few months to recover from an eye injury and multiple surgeries.

Secateur Eared Bat was a fun last minute addition to the exhibition.

Beet Hook Greylag is a life sized goose sculpture. I rather liked the serendipity in using the sickle type beet hooks for the piece. Before mechanisation, beet hooks would have been used for topping the leaves off sugar beet by hand, over-wintering geese make use of sugar beet fields for foraging so it seems very apt.

Reclining Hare

I exhibited a couple of small hare sculptures. Reclining Hare and Hare Washing.

Cable Crested Grebe looks deceptively simple, but it took a lot of careful consideration to capture this elegant bird.

The Natural Eye 2022

The Natural Eye, the annual exhibition of the Society of Wildlife Artists is held at the prestigious Mall Galleries, London. The show runs from 13th-22nd October and has over 300 works by many different artists inspired by the natural world.

I have a few pieces in the show. Chain Necked Water Rail was inspired from seeing one when I was in the Wadden Sea National Park in Denmark as part of the SWLA collaborative project earlier this year.

I have made a couple of hares for the show as well. Scratch is a smaller piece and Hare on Spade is pretty much life sized.

Hare on Spade by Harriet Mead — Hare on Spade

Scissor Tailed Tern is a sculpture with lots of negative space and made of carefully selected items for a more minimal piece.

Scissor Tailed Tern by Harriet Mead — Scissor Tailed Tern

Another bird in the exhibition is Fork Crested Lapwing.

Fork Crested Lapwing by Harriet Mead — Fork Crested Lapwing

Sickle Winged Swift (accidentally catalogued as Scissor Winged Swift) is another piece available from the exhibition.

The Natural Eye 2021

The 58th annual exhibition of the Society of Wildlife Artists runs from 14-24 October 2021 at Mall Galleries in London. I have several pieces for sale at the exhibition. I have been inspired by animals that I see close to home as well as making a couple of works as a result of spending time at The Argyll and Islands Hope Spot Project in Scotland.

Shear Tawny Owl is about life sized and is perched on an old metal pipe. I really enjoyed playing with textures to describe the soft, barred plumage on the breast of the bird. Chain from an old dog lead, a carving fork and a small garden fork worked well. I am lucky to have a pair of tawny owls resident in my garden, although I rarely see them I do hear them a lot.

Shear Tawny Owl
Shear Tawny Owl
Shear Tawny Owl
Shear Tawny Owl
Shear Tawny Owl

Fork Feathered Raven is a life sized raven. There have been a pair wintering close to me here in Norfolk. Ravens are impressive birds and lend themselves well to the materials I use. The shaggy feathers are various garden forks and the huge beak is based around a ‘finger’ from a combine harvester. I enjoy making the sculpture balance and getting the stance of the subject right. I was careful to ensure that this raven stood properly without resorting to using the tail as a third point of contact.

Fork Feathered Raven
Fork Feathered Raven
Fork Feathered Raven
Fork Feathered Raven
Fork Feathered Raven
Fork Feathered Raven
Fork Feathered Raven
Fork Feathered Raven

Roe deer are common around where I live. I think they are the most elegant of the deer species in the UK. I have made female roe deer before but when I was looking through a box of pliers, I found some handles that made me think of the roebuck’s antlers so decided to try and make one. I wanted to emphasise the delicate stance by using simple tapered shapes for the legs rather than trying to create feet.

G-Clamp Roebuck
G-Clamp Roebuck
G-Clamp Roebuck
G-Clamp Roebuck
G-Clamp Roebuck
G-Clamp Roebuck

I was watching the house martins and swallows gathering before they started heading south and thought it would be nice to try and make a swallow. Whenever I make a sculpture, I look around at all the different tools I have in store and this large pair of tweezers made a perfect tail for the male swallow.

Tweezer Tailed Swallow
Tweezer Tailed Swallow
Tweezer Tailed Swallow
Tweezer Tailed Swallow
Tweezer Tailed Swallow

I am very fortunate to see hares almost daily here in the Brecks of Norfolk. I never get bored of them and love watching them. They are easiest to see in the winter or spring when the fields are bare or the crops low and it helps if I am out riding one of my horses as I have a great view from higher up!

Itchy
Itchy
Itchy
Itchy
Itchy

Padlock Shore Crab and Sawblade Wrasse were inspired by a trip I made to Tayvalloch in Scotland in July. Several SWLA artists were invited to spend time in this stunning area to swim and snorkel so that we could then make work inspired by the experience. It was part of The Argyll Coast and Islands Hope Spot Project, set up to celebrate the amazingly rich marine habitats of the area.

Padlock Shore Crab
Padlock Shore Crab
Padlock Shore Crab
Padlock Shore Crab

Sawblade Wrasse
Sawblade Wrasse
Sawblade Wrasse

Visit Mall Galleries to view the work, book a ticket to visit the exhibition or purchase one of the sculptures.

If you wish to commission me do get in touch via the contact form from this website.

The Natural Eye 2020

The 57th annual exhibition of the Society of Wildlife Artists is going ahead this year. The Mall Galleries have worked hard to enable visitors to enjoy the exhibition whilst ensuring that social distancing is in place.

I have managed to make seven works for the exhibition this year. Secret Squirrel was inspired by seeing grey squirrels visiting a walnut tree in my garden. The drill bits worked perfectly as a tail.

I have created three different birds for the show: Scissor Winged Tern is made using sickles, scissors and lots of chromed and light coloured items to reference the plumage shape and colour.

Twice Shy is a pretty much life sized bittern sculpture. Bitterns often adopt this strange pose when disturbed as if trying to blend into the reeds so the title works very well. The old dog lead chains hang really well on this piece but it took quite a lot of tinkering to get them right.

The third sculpture of a bird that I have created for the exhibition is of this resting Shag. These almost prehistoric looking birds nest on craggy shorelines and are often seen resting with outstretched wings. Thought to be drying their wings some scientists think it may be more to do with aiding digestion. Either way I think it makes a lovely shape. I needed to find a suitable base for the piece and was pleased to unearth a toolbox that obviously used to belong to someone called Ron, hence the title.

I always enjoy watching hares in the fields around my home in rural Norfolk. This year I have made a pair boxing (Lockdown Hares) and a study of one sitting hunkered down in a furrow (Red Hoe Hare).

Spanner Frog incorporates all kinds of old tools including ring spanners for the eyes and an old bottle opener in the back. It’s quite tricky capturing the way that the frog folds its back legs when at rest, especially when using old tools!

The Natural Eye, Mall Galleries, London

The annual exhibition of the Society of Wildlife Artists runs from 26th October to 6th November. It showcases the very best of art inspired by the natural world and has over 350 pieces by more than 100 artists on display this year.

Trowel Owl

I have worked hard to get 8 pieces made for the exhibition, amongst them is ‘Funnel’ a cuckoo chick being fed by a reed warbler. This sculpture was inspired by a visit to a private nature reserve specifically to observe cuckoo young in warbler nests as part of the SWLA/BTO Flight Lines project. This project looks at the story of our summer migrants. Selected artists spent time with researchers and field biologists from the British Trust for Ornithology and the resulting work will culminate in a book to be published next year.

Funnel

The exhibition is open to the public and well worth a visit.

Damselfly on Stems

Rake Ribbed Caracal

I was lucky enough to see a caracal when I was in South Africa a few years ago so I was really excited when I was asked to make one.

It was very important to get the head right, as I think felines can be especially difficult to capture. I had a pair of very large split pins that worked well for the eyes and I used pliers, coathooks and other curving items to get the muzzle and cheekbones.

I used steel cable for the characteristic tufts on the ears and bow saw blades for other fur-like texture in places. The legs and paws used up a very large number of bull-nosed and other types of pliers as they helped define the toes.

I was very pleased with the movement in the piece and was careful to get the overall balance so that the front paw is just off the ground. The power in the hindquarters and shoulders are conveyed with large items such as horseshoes, clamps and spanners. On one side I even managed to incorporate a large bolt from a door.

I am very grateful to my clients for allowing me to borrow the piece back so that it can be shown at The Natural Eye, the annual exhibition of the Society of Wildlife Artists which is at the Mall Galleries from Thursday 30 October until Sunday 9th November 2014.

Drill Tailed Squirrel

I was thinking of subjects for sculptures for The Natural Eye, the annual exhibition of The Society of Wildlife Artists at the Mall Galleries in London, and decided that it would be fun to try and make a red squirrel.

I tried to make the piece life size but it ended up a little too large. Despite my best efforts most pieces end up about 15 or 20 percent bigger than I intend. I think it is a combination of working with found objects and working in 3D. If I was using a malleable material such as plaster or clay I could remove or add volume fairly easily. With found objects I like to try and show as much of the shape of the original tool as possible and hesitate to grind volume away and ‘muddy’ the shapes.

The head has a variety of tiny spanners in it and the ears are made of a large wingnut that I cut in half and dinner forks with steel cable for the tufts. Although it is a bit obvious to use colour in the piece, I think it helps to show it is a red squirrel and not the larger grey. The bulk of the red comes from an old hand drill and a canterbury hoe along with a couple of pairs of pliers that had red handles. In addition I found a coat hook that I brought back from Sark with layers of white paint which was perfect for the white belly. The tail proved a problem until I hit on the idea of using old auger drill bits.

Scissor Green Woodpecker

There has been a family of green woodpeckers in the horse fields over the summer so it was natural for me to try and make one. As with all smaller creatures it is actually quite tricky to make one in welded found objects. Luckily a green woodpecker is quite a characteristic shape.

I don’t often use colour in my sculptures but I had a few red items out in my workshop from making a red squirrel so I had a red combine ‘finger’ and a red canterbury hoe to hand. It helped to confirm the species and I think it works well in this sculpture.

The beak is the make or break of any sculpture of a bird. I had to trawl through my collection of scissors to find just the right sizes for this. Parts of the handles helped with the head and the flanks. One pair even had red handles so I could use them in the head as well.

The blades from larger scissors all went into the tails and wings. The lovely shape of the tail, which has very stiff feathers to help the bird balance when clinging to trees, is all scissor blades other than the central feather which is a very old plumb line weight.

This piece will be for sale at The Natural Eye, the annual exhibition of the Society of Wildlife Artists at Mall Galleries London. The show runs from Thursday October 30th until Sunday 9th November 2014.

Living on the Edge

no images were found

I made this piece for an exhibition in Stamford called ‘Living on the Edge’ that was a spin off from the New Networks for Nature symposium. The remit of the show was to make work in response to the title. It was a thought provoking show and I made Dog Chain Bittern, Tweezer Nosed Frog, a Roesel’s Bush Cricket and Bilhook Badger.

Dog Chain Bittern alluded to the success of conservation efforts to help a particular species by setting up reserves.

The Tweezer Nosed Frog was a reference to how the world has got smaller so that wildlife can be exposed to non native flora and fauna and indeed viruses, in this case the choroid virus that has spread through amphibians and is cited as the cause of extinction of at least one South American frog species.

The Roesel’s Bush cricket is extending its range in the UK possibly through global warming and by making use of roadside verges.

A badger was an obvious choice as being a mammal in the news due to the TB crisis and an example of a species that is at the centre of a massive controversy involving Government, the farming industry, conservation organisations and the public.

I made a special effort to use plenty of digging tools in the piece as I enjoyed the fact that badgers are honed digging machines.