On Drawing Animals

A human sitter arranges their face. They cannot help it; we all carry an idea of how we wish to be seen. An animal does no such thing. A horse in a field is only ever exactly what it is, and a drawing of it succeeds or fails on those terms alone.

This is why animal portraiture, which is sometimes treated as the gentle end of fine art, is in my experience the most demanding work I take on. There is nowhere to hide. Get the set of a dog's shoulders wrong by a centimetre and its owner will feel the error before they can name it.

The commissions that come through this studio are mostly of animals now, and most of those are elderly ones. People reach for a portrait when they begin to understand time is finite. It is an extraordinary thing to be trusted with, and I try to draw accordingly.

My only rule: I draw from photographs of the animal at ease, never posed. The portrait should be of an ordinary moment — because the ordinary moments are the ones that will be missed.