February-March 2022

54 DIGITAL SKETCHES ON THE THEME OF WILD ANIMALS IN THE CITY

The theme arose as a further category of animal pictures, initially it seemed just a supplement to previous series, ENDANGERED SPECIES (2015) and CREATURE COMFORTS (2019), but now dealing in mostly larger, sometimes predatory species, adapting to urban environments. As an online genre, I soon found this to be a vast and complex field, encompassing everything from ingenious adaptation to sentimental indulgence, faltering social boundaries and customs, neglect, happenstance, ecological degradation, dystopia and entropy. It was so much more than I expected. Deciding how to label or focus the series became a challenge. ‘Adaptation’ covered most of the activity but suggested a gradual evolution and a stable environment. Neither of which were strictly accurate. I settled on SCAVENGING, for the proactive, opportunistic aspect.

Obviously it also parallels my approach to depiction.

I’ve taken a global view, geography determining which species exploit human centres, while acknowledging introduced species, such as foxes, squirrels, deer and boar. But I’m less concerned with zoology than the emblematic value wild animals bring to urban habitats. It is essentially an anarchic, disruptive presence, equal parts threat and benevolence, welcome but occasionally dangerous, even destructive, while in moderation reassuring, even divine or magical.  Ultimately it embodies the traditional duality of nature and culture, a spontaneous and unpredictable world versus a planned and secure one.

Quite unexpectedly, this has turned into one of my favourite series.

More notes at the bottom of the page.

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The theme of a compromised or relativistic nature has been addressed in earlier series, GARDEN PATH (2018) and LAND LEAST (2021). There it was variously matched against traditional views of suburban landscape. With SCAVENGING the theme acquires a central figure, a comparatively wild animal and a much more contemporary genre. I had expected to use more of the primitive collage methods I had revived in the previous series, RE:CYCLING (2021) but ultimately this proved a distraction. The theme tended to be distanced by such efforts. Instead, the pictures mostly exploit a range of treatments from photographic realism to more stylised graphics, more or less maintaining a unified perspective and proportion, while variously simplifying, filtering and exaggerating parts. The parallel between nature and realism – an object and its picture – is hopefully evident.

It is a very time-consuming way of working, meticulously separating out objects within a picture and reconstituting their background for different treatments. It is something I explored in PLACEHOLDERS (2020), there not really aligning with nature. The bulk of efforts from this method are not visible in the completed works, but importantly provide options to the process. It is not always suitable to a theme, but is so central to my overall project it is satisfying when theme and structure align so elegantly.

 

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