JonTremaine

British Wildlife Artist:

The concept of Pictures within picture was inspired by my late brother David who had drawn two pictures, one of a tree and one of a person both of which contained abstract shapes within them.

I get my inspiration from nature and personal experiences such as walking the coast paths, kicking leaves in the woods, watching wildlife on the moors or even sitting by a river.

Before commencing a fine art drawing I will take time to consider the subject matter. It is paramount that I select an interesting and challenging piece as I can spend up to 120 hours illustrating. Further consideration is assigned to what I think other people will find attractive.

As a source of inspiration I use digital photography, reference books, observation and interrupting wildlife images I find on the Internet. Rarely do I draw animals in the wild, they don't stand around long enough for me to capture the detail I require!

The intricacy of the animals within animal's structure powerfully suggests the inter-connectedness of all life. You will notice the images within my pictures are subjects that you see in nature, for example: Frogs, Trees, and Fish. The detailed drawings of fauna and abstract are enjoyable to draw but the challenging part is making them interact with each other whilst maintaining the overall image in its tone and visual accuracy.

These imaginative creations are what hold the forms together, they create a poetic journey through the picture and are used to highlight structures for example; the dark area in the shoulder off the Otter was predominantly shaded in heavy Black which corresponded with the profile and shading of it's shoulder, you will see within this shading is a wasp inspecting blackberries having a great time!

Viewer's perspective has been described to me as a variety of phenomenal emotive producing imaginative shapes and patterns which interlink or appear totally random creating elegant powerful lines.

I wrote the words 'Madness is close to genius' in one of my illustrations. This was born from a comment made by someone who described how it was unusual, although interesting to have such random, mad, imaginative shapes directly adjacent to those which are especially conventional images of animals and flowers.

I guess it is a remarkable point, one of which is integral to the style and creation of my art. My daughter once said '' We are all mad, it's whether we chose to show it!'