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A few years ago I received an interesting commission from a close friend. As a result of that request I have enjoyed exploring a whole new range of creative ideas, pushing my visual imagination and researching an extended range of animal subjects. My friend James has, since childhood, harbored a fascination for the animals which once roamed the British Isles. As an historian, he has studied many ancient records documenting the distribution of the once abundant, but now absent fauna. His brief for a commission was that I should paint a scene 'turning back the clock' to imagine the wolves that once roamed the Highlands of Scotland. In this painting I portray "The Shadow of the Wolf” - an apex predator capable of restoring the balance of nature, and as the Yellowstone experience has shown, one which facilitates the return of further animal species. Here in Scotland, the habitat is now sadly lacking apex predators, resulting in a huge deer population that has overgrazed most of the upland landscape to the detriment of wider biodiversity.
