Artists for Albatrosses - 5 weeks on South Georgia.
A selection of paintings, drawings and field work
by John Gale and Chris Rose.
Raising funds and awareness for albatross and seabird conservation.
From our exhibition held at the Air Gallery, 32 Dover Street, London, 3rd-15th October 2011,
we
have raised £16,000 for 'Save the Albatross' campaign.Artists sail through hurricane to help save albatrosses from extinction.
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Two internationally acclaimed wildlife artists, John Gale and Chris Rose, survived a hurricane to bring to public attention the plight of albatrosses threatened with global extinction. Sailing 900 miles in a 20m yacht to the remote island of South Georgia they battled through 10m waves and winds in excess of 80 knots to sketch and paint albatrosses and other wildlife for a major exhibition to raise funds and awareness for the Save the Albatross Campaign. |
Click on image below to view paintings.
26 species of seabird, including 18 out of the 22 species of albatross, are in danger of extinction because of deaths caused by long-line fishing. About 100,000 albatrosses are drowned on fishing hooks every year - a rate of one every five minutes. Only able to raise one chick every two years the albatross family is becoming threatened with extinction faster than any other family of birds. Albatrosses have survived in the harshest marine environments for 50 million years; more than 100 times longer than our own species, but these magnificent birds are unable to cope with this new, man-made threat to their existence. Moved by their plight we journeyed to South Georgia to paint these birds and the ruggedly spectacular world they inhabit.
Sketching and painting on South Georgia presented real challenges and often involved enduring rain, high winds, blizzards, rough seas, and the ever-present and aggressive fur seals. Being eyeball-to-eyeball with an aggressive fur seal (and they have very sharp teeth) is not an experience one forgets very easily. Every landing on South Georgia involved defending ourselves from those sharp teeth; even the cute-looking fluffy pups would nip your legs given the chance. In addition, thieving sheathbills – little white birds something like a cross between a pigeon and a chicken – stole pieces of painting equipment, hats, gloves and anything that wasn’t tied down, and collapsed an improvised rain shelter on several occasions by running off with the tent pegs! But it was worth all of the dangers and every uncomfortable minute just to have the privilege of sitting a few feet away from displaying wandering albatrosses, with their 3.3 metre wingspans. These emblems of the wild, open ocean sit patiently for weeks on end, through snow and screaming winds, incubating a single egg or a downy chick.
South Georgia is a land of superlatives and its raw energy and stark beauty always offered something to draw or paint. We witnessed pairs of that most elegant of albatrosses, the light-mantled sooty albatross, performing their balletic, synchronised courtship flight against the backdrop of snow-covered mountains, and we stood at the edge of a colony of a quarter of a million king penguins; a moving tapestry of white, grey, yellow and black spread out before us.
All of life is played out on the island’s beaches – from birth to death on one thin strip of land. Seal pups play amongst the bones of their dead ancestors, washed down from the tussock grass slopes above to collect in great strands on the beaches. A dead penguin is torn to shreds by the razor-sharp beaks of giant petrels while a few feet away a gentoo penguin guards her vulnerable chicks. There are, however, few visions more moving and stimulating than that of a wandering albatross as it glides in great, sweeping arcs over the wind-whipped waves, gleaming white against the leaden clouds of a passing storm. To lose this would be unforgivable.
The exhibition has been generously sponsored by Hurtigruten, which has allowed the artists to donate 25% of exhibition sales to the Save the Albatross campaign. Both artists are also donating a significant piece of work to be auctioned by the RSPB for albatross conservation as well as a number of limited edition print runs, to be sold exclusively through the RSPB with all proceeds going to the 'Save the Albatross' campaign.
