Hi there – a brief introduction is, I think, required. My name is Tim Wootton and I live in Orkney. I work as a full-time artist, gaining inspiration from the birds and landscape with which I share this wonderful environment. Whenever possible, I try to make each piece of work directly from observational drawings and fieldwork in colour. I rarely complete a piece in the field, but take drawings and snapshots (plus the sounds, sights and smells of 'outside') back to the studio and work at a painting until completion. Unlike many other artists I know, I seem to be unable to stop a piece once it has been initiated. I seem to need the energy of completing in one, or two, sittings for the result to be satisfactory to me. These sittings, however, can be quite lengthy ones. When working at a painting I rarely see my bed until the early hours (and occasionally not at all)
I have been drawing and watching birds since as long as I can remember. I'm not sure if I would class myself as a birder who paints, or an artist who goes birdwatching – whatever the difference might be.
Links under construction
- Yorkshire Television Programme
- Gallery
- Drawing Courses
- Sketchbook
- Wildlife Watching Courses
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- Links
I was born in South Yorkshire in 1963. My earliest memories are of woodland walks, catching sticklebacks and scrumping apples.
And all around, of course, the birds. My fascination with birds was kindled by my elder brother , Stephen, who, in an attempt to keep me amused, would allow me to look at his most treasured possession – ''Thorburn's Birds'' by James Fisher. Many, many hours, days, weeks later and I was able to (almost) sketch from memory the outline of the Golden Eagle clutching a hare.
My mother, a great nature lover, was the unofficial animal hospital for the parish. Sparrows, blackbirds, wood pigeons and every common member of the crow family turned up at our doorstep. We even had custody of two nestling greater-spotted woodpeckers (still complete in their dismembered silver birch trunk). One protege, a particularly curious and wilful magpie (named Maggie – of course!) managed to get into national newspaper headlines – ''Monster Magpie Terrifies Schoolchildren'' was the claim. In fact our 'tame' magpie used to beg for titbits at the kitchen table by standing on the 'donor's' head. This headstanding habit became a bit obsessive and, after following my younger brother, Jez, and me down to school one day, suddenly became the scourge of the playground. I still remember graphically the headmaster jabbing his cane at the windowsill-bound Maggie as maybe a lion-tamer might, whilst demanding we get back as this was clearly a dangerous bird. I'm still not sure how close this episode is to the release of Hitchcock's ornithological masterpiece 'The Birds', but similarities are striking.
Following a decent Secondary School education, where I met the future mother to our children(although neither of us had the slightest incling at the time) onto Foundation Course at Barnsley School of Art and Design – thence on to London. The four year Scientific Illustration course at Middlesex polytechnic was, I'm sure, a brilliant programme for young illustrators, alas it and I did not see eye to eye and I took it upon myself to transfer courses (and colleges). I graduated from Manchester Polytecnhnic and the obscurely named 'Design for Communication Media' course, in 1986.
In 1987 I was a prizewinner at the 'South Yorkshire Open Exhibition' for a complex, layered painting of moorland birds and landscapes and, in 1991 I was shortlisted for the 'Young European Bird Artist of the Year' award – the same year the highly regarded painter, Darren Rees, won the main award with a stunningly beautiful watercolour of guillemots.
Although active conservation became my main, and draining, passion for the next ten years, art still featured highly when campaigns to protect great-crested newt colonies subsided for a while. Of course I always painted and created art and, in 1992, I managed to combine both these loves into one project. I, with some friends, decided to enter a team in a sponsored 24 hour birdwatch on behalf of the 'Save the Spanish Steppes' appeal. After the birdwatch and having raised a considerable sum through corporate and private sponsorship, I realised there was an opportunity to take the thing a step further. I set out to make an illustrated record of each bird seen, and its locale – all 113 of them! The subsequent exhibition was sold out within 20 minutes, all proceeds to the Spanish Steppes appeal. I guess it was the fore-runner of the commendable work done now by the Artists for Nature Foundation. My account of the birdwatch and the following artwork and exhibition was published as a feature in the Winter 1992 edition of 'Birds Illustrated'. Looking back, I often berate myself for spending time not painting, I often feel I've lost time in my development as an artist, now that being an artist is what I am committed to being – yet the great swedish painter Lars Jonsson speaks in his beautiful book ''Birds and Light'' of being distracted from painting, that other things seem to get in the way. So maybe I shouldn't be too hard on myself for 'wasting time saving newts'.
During this decade I had designs published as greetings cards by the Medici Society and by CCA and I exhibited with the Society of Wildlife Atists several times – on one occasion my painting was purchased by the Society to give as a prize. I also exhibited regularly with the RSPB at their annual members' weekend, which brought me into contact with lots of fine folk. I also had a successful graphic design business, specialising in design for the countryside (something I still do) which took up a huge amount of time and energy and in part, was the catalyst for my decision to switch tack.
The big change came when we bought our house in Orkney in 2002. Shortly after we made the inspired relocation to the Northern Islands of Orkney.
And here, as they say, is where it all begins...
