Michael C Wood wildlife artist & illustrator

Profile

My birdwatching days kicked off when a schoolfriend told me about a barn owl he had discovered in a derelict barn not very far from where I lived in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester.  The bird was no longer there when  we  went to find it the next day, but we did see grey wagtail, kestrel and kingfisher, and I was hooked.  From then on most weekends were spent  birdwatching in favourite parts of the Lancashire and Cheshire countryside - Rostherne Mere, Tatton, the Sefton coast, and my local patch of the Mersey valley between Chorlton and Sale, which now seems to have disappeared under motorway interchanges.

I quickly started to record my observations by drawing and painting birds, and had a few early efforts published in Bird Life in the 1970‘s.  When it was time to settle on a career I opted for landscape architecture, which at that time was one of the few professions that would allow me to combine my main interests - conservation, birds and drawing.  My first thought was that this would be a safe job to fall back on just in case painting birds didn’t work out, but I became fully immersed in many fascinating landscape design projects for many years.  

As an antidote to long hours at the drawing board I spent much of my free time as a conservation volunteer, working on many of the nature reserves in the east of England and then on international conservation projects such as the all-encompassing biodiversity monitoring project at S’Albufera in Mallorca. Working in these special habitats gave me  excellent opportunities for close observation of all sorts of wildlife, expanding my interest beyond birds and prompting me to paint again.

I then worked for a few years on landscape assessments and environmental monitoring of countryside schemes (eg. Environmentally Sensitive Areas), and  started picking up  illustration work for other landscape designers and garden magazines. A landscape consultancy project on provision for birdwatching on the Norfolk Coast enabled me to give up the day job in 1996 and order to concentrate on wildlife painting and illustration. Since then commissions have included illustrating a variety of wildlife books and designing interpretation displays for The Wildlife Trusts, The National Trust, the Environment Agency and others. My paintings are sold mainly through local exhibitions and the Art Marquee at the British Birdwatching Fair.

Like many artists, I don’t paint all the time! I get regular requests to give talks and workshops, and I do a small amount of tuition locally. I have taught wildlife drawing courses for the Field Studies Council, Cambridge colleges, Cambridge University Botanic Garden education programme and individuals. I still get involved in specialist landscape projects and garden designs, and from time to time I lead painting and wildlife holidays.

I currently have a backlog of paintings competing to emerge from fieldwork in the Danube Delta, Ecuador, Extremadura, The Gambia,  the Galapagos, Iceland, Lesvos and Mallorca, as well as the wetlands and coast of East Anglia, so if you would like to see more work from any of these areas please get in touch.