Alan Hunt

Alan Hunt Artist Biography

Born: Redcar, North Yorkshire, UK, 15 June 1947

Alan Hunt artist materialised on 15 June 1947 in the rugged embrace of Redcar, a North Yorkshire coastal enclave where the North Sea's relentless roar mingled with the cries of gulls wheeling over ironstone cliffs, kindling an inexorable bond with the untamed that would underpin his life's dual vocation. Amidst the briny tang of fishing boats and the salt-crusted dunes where fulmars nested in precarious crags, young Alan's days blurred into fervent forays with a tattered Observer's Book of British Birds clutched like a talisman, his initial forays into depiction commencing at age eight with watercolour vignettes of garden finches and wading curlews, harbingers of a prodigious affinity that blended empirical scrutiny with nascent artistry.

Fostered by a family attuned to his precocity—parents who supplied sketchpads amid the ration-book austerity of post-war Britain—Alan's trajectory veered decisively towards formal refinement at Middlesbrough School of Art (now Cleveland College of Art and Design), where immersive studies in drawing, composition, and colour theory from 1963 to 1966 honed his draughtsmanship into a tool of taxonomic precision. Yet, his intellectual compass extended beyond aesthetics; parallel pursuits in zoology at Leeds City College and the University of Bristol from 1967 to 1970 endowed him with a profound lexicon of anatomy, ethology, and ecology, forging the moniker 'the zoologist who paints wildlife' as a credo that would indelibly shape Alan Hunt artworks as scholarly symphonies of survival.

Emerging from academia in 1970, Alan Hunt artist spurned conventional trajectories for an audacious immersion in the wild's crucible, orchestrating self-funded expeditions that spanned continents and cultivated his oeuvre's hallmark verisimilitude. Debuting with a solo exhibition in Redcar at merely eighteen—showcasing oils of local avifauna that captivated hometown patrons—his ascent accelerated through commissions and showcases at York’s Austin Hayes Gallery, where early pieces like avian portraits evolved into expansive narratives integrating fauna with flora in symphonic balance. By the mid-1970s, annual pilgrimages to Africa's cradle—encompassing Kruger National Park's thornveld thickets, Kenya's Masai Mara grasslands, Botswana's Okavango floodplains, and Tanzania's Serengeti plains—demanded bivouacs in concealed machans and nocturnal vigils, yielding sketchbooks brimming with gestural studies of lion prides at dusk or elephant matriarchs negotiating riverine shallows, raw data transmuted into studio masterpieces.

Alan's peripatetic ethos propelled further ventures: Alaskan tundra treks tracking grizzlies amid salmon runs, Yellowstone's geothermal basins where bison herds steamed through frost-kissed meadows, Guatemala's cloud-forest canopies alive with resplendent quetzals, and Himalayan sojourns in India and Nepal chronicling elusive snow leopards and langur troops. A zenith of polar audacity unfolded in the late 1980s as lead painter on an Antarctic Peninsula Sea Safari, where sub-zero sketches from heaving ice floes captured Adélie penguin rookeries and orca pods breaching berg-strewn bays, experiences that infused Alan Hunt prints with an arctic austerity rare in temperate climes. Madagascar's lemur-haunted spires rounded his roving repertoire, each locale's lore layered into canvases that eschewed mere portraiture for ecological epics, where a rhino's mud-caked flank mirrored savannah scars or a gorilla's knuckle-drag echoed arboreal lineages.

His studio praxis, a meticulous alchemy conducted from a Scarborough redoubt overlooking the Yorkshire Moors, commences with photographic dossiers and journal annotations amassed on-site, progressing to charcoal thumbnails that map behavioural cruxes before acrylic underpainting establishes tonal architecture. Oils or acrylics then ascend in veils of scumbles and glazes—employing sable brushes for fur's filamentary finesse and hog-hair for hide's rugged relief—against primed linen that amplifies luminosity, often spanning months of diurnal deliberations punctuated by references to veterinary texts or ethological tomes. Recent evolutions incorporate textural experiments with rendered fabrics—satin drapes juxtaposed against feathered forms—expanding his photorealistic purview while retaining an unyielding fidelity to form, as evidenced in commissions blending equestrian motifs with wildlife vignettes, a nod to his partnership with equestrian artist Judi Kent Pyrah.

Alan's personal tapestry weaves conservation into its warp: ensconced in a Yorkshire farmhouse where he breeds Arabian horses and rehabilitates barn owls, he channels royalties and donations—such as a 2017 bequest of originals and prints to Redcar and Cleveland's mayoral coffers for anti-poaching auctions—towards bastions like the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and Born Free Foundation. Father to son Guy with Pyrah, and stepfather to Zach Mendelsohn who orchestrated transatlantic showcases during expatriate interludes in France, Alan's ethos resonates in paternal pleas: 'If my son doesn’t get to see half the wildlife in his lifetime I’ve seen, I’ll feel very guilty,' a sentiment propelling his art as activism. Now in his late seventies, having retired from field-leading tutelage, Alan Hunt artist persists in creation, his Scarborough sanctum a forge where accumulated odysseys yield Alan Hunt artworks that not only chronicle but champion the biosphere's beleaguered ballet.

Alan Hunt Art Style and Techniques

Alan Hunt's art epitomises photorealistic prowess tempered by ecological eloquence, wherein endangered exemplars emerge from limned landscapes with hyper-detailed discernment—whiskers wiry with dew, pelts patinated by provenance—that verges on the visceral, yet yields to narrative nuance where environs articulate existential stakes. Acrylics afford swift superimpositions for behavioural flux, while oils confer depth's durational glow; influences from avian anatomists like Frank Liszt and ethologists such as Jane Goodall coalesce in compositions that probe interspecies interplay, rendering Alan Hunt artworks as manifestos melding microscopy with manifesto.

Achievements of Alan Hunt Artist

Alan Hunt artist has amassed a constellation of commendations for his wildlife advocacy through artistry, encompassing:

• Launching a solo exhibition at age eighteen in Redcar, North Yorkshire, followed by international acclaim with lead roles at five US exhibitions and original sales at Sotheby's, Bonhams, and Christie's since the 1970s
• Securing four Award of Excellence medals from the Society of Animal Artists (USA) for works including *Northern Majesty* (1996), *Gone But Not Forgotten* (1989), *A Gathering of Swallows* (1987), and *Snow Leopard* (1986), alongside three consecutive Best Artist on Show titles from the Society of Wildlife Artists (SWLA, UK)
• Becoming the first non-American inducted into the American Wildlife Art Hall of Fame in 1998, and named Artist of the Year at the Florida Wildlife Art Expo in 1999
• Triumphing at BBC Wildlife Artist of the Year 2010 with *Watchmen* (Animals in their Environment category winner) and *Tiger in Water* (Endangered Species runner-up), plus three awards at David Shepherd Wildlife Artist of the Year 2018 including Category Winner in Animal Behaviour, The Artist Magazine Award, and People's Choice
• Shortlisting for David Shepherd Wildlife Artist of the Year in 2022, with proceeds bolstering conservation, complemented by annual NEWA donations and 2017 charitable artworks for Redcar and Cleveland, sustaining Alan Hunt prints' role in global wildlife guardianship into 2025