David Shepherd

David Shepherd paints a scene of incredible dominance-- his subject, the African bull elephant, emerges from the brush, dust encircling the powerful animal as the viewer imagines the echoing of his massive gait.  Shepherd devoted his entire career to African wildlife following his first trip to Kenya in 1960.  Influenced by other worldly adventure-seekers who came before him-- most notably Ernest Hemingway, who made his first trip to Africa in 1933-- Shepherd brings the safari back home.  However, unlike Hemingway, whose relationship with Africa was in seeking masculine adventure and hunting big game, Shepherd, as a painter, has simultaneously become a world-renowned conservationist, determining to save the animals from destruction.  The David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation (DSWF) has since its creation given away over  £3 million in grants to save critically endangered mammals in their wild habitat and to benefit the local people who share their environment (http://davidshepherd.org/project_intro.shtml).  The artist paints vivid scenes of Africa, honoring the beauty and mystique behind the magnificent big game animals that have attracted Westerners to the continent for the past century.