Few artists take the principle of painting from first-hand experience quite as far as the acclaimed wildlife artist Dr Jeremy Paul does.

As an accomplished photographer as well as being skilled with a brush, Jeremy gathers his own subject matter, painting from his own photographs, gathered through extensive travels across throughout most of the world’s most challenging landscapes.

Jeremy is set to open his new exhibition, ’Wildlife-An Artist’s View’ at the Isle Gallery, in Tynwald Mills, this coming Sunday.

The exhibition features 35 new paintings, showing a mixture of local and more exotic wildlife and includes the original paintings commissioned for the Isle of Man postage stamp series of ’Coastal Birds’ which were released in June.

And in preparation for his latest exhibition Jeremy has visited Costa Rica, India and has just returned from photographing the wildlife of Madagascar including lemurs and chameleons.

’The exhibition features new paintings from India after some very close encounters with tigers,’ said Jeremy. ’There is also a painting of toucans from Costa Rica, which was selected for the final exhibition in the "Wildlife Artist of the Year 2017" at the Mall galleries in London.’

He is a widely-admired artist who is skilled at capturing animals in their purest and most natural form.

However, his paintings are not just copied straight from photographs. He explained that the photographs only go to give him ideas of how the painting should look.

’The photographs are reference, to get the details correct,’ he said.

’I use a number of photographs for a single painting, taking bits out of different ones and altering the composition.

’When I come back from a place I have a complete photo reference of the place, the flora, the fauna and so on. It always takes a while to go through the images and the memories of a place before I decide what I’m going to paint.’

After gaining a doctorate in Marine Biology, and having once studied in Port Erin, he started to paint after spending time on a remote Scottish island.

’There were six of us, with no television and lots of wildlife,’ said Jeremy, who now lives in Colby.

’I sold my first picture of ’Highland Birds’ to the owner of the island. I never started out to become an artist, I have just always liked painting and drawing wildlife.’

The exhibition opens with an artist’s preview on Sunday, October 1, from 2pm, and will be open to the public until November 12.

It is sponsored by Blackford’s Financial Services and Insurance, the Isle of Man Arts Council and Culture Vannin.

For more information visit theislegallery.com

by Mike Wade

twitter:@iomnewspapers