Master of art

ANDREW Stock can certainly ‘do it’. It’s easy – a bit of blue, a strip of white, some grey and a streak of black, and there you have a brilliant, powerful, threedimensional snowy peak, or an iceberg on a frozen ocean ... but, when I try, I just get a drab, flat daub!

The difference between a ‘can’t-do-it-if-I-tried’ wannabe and the exquisite execution of Andrew’s artistic output is immense, with just the same watercolours, gouache, acrylics, oils and little brushes. In The Call of the Running Tide we see immaculate evocations of dramatic landscapes, cliffs and buildings, rivers, estuaries and heaving seas, delicate flowery meadows and butterflies, finished works and preparatory sketches.

This superb selection of his work is largely grouped geographically, from the West Country and Scotland to the Alps, South Africa, India and the Antarctic. There is enough explanatory text to whet the appetite for more. Having been aware of Andrew since his work first emerged, and having attended many of the exhibitions of the Society of Wildlife Artists (SWLA), I especially enjoyed the review of his involvement with SWLA, which saw him deservedly rising to President.

You can be sure, too, that whatever the picture, his birds will be spot on, whether a postage-stamp Great Blackbacked Gull over massive waves or minute Brown-headed Gulls over an Indian river, equally perfectly rendered.

Personal favourites will depend on which exhibits take you back to a particular time, place or species: mine include a brilliant study of an elephant and a fabulous Peregrine

Falcon on a cliff. Nobody does stone, boulders, walls and cliffs better.

It’s nice, too, to see a wonderful book like this printed in the UK. All in all, it is a real treat.