ROBERT E FULLER
b. 1972

ROBERT Fuller is one of Britain 's leading wildlife artists. He is also a passionate conservationist who has worked tirelessly to preserve the animals and birds he owes his livelihood to.

Born in 1972 to a family equally dedicated to nature– his father Richard Fuller is an award-winning farmer conservationist who has published a number of books on wildlife – he grew up on a farm on the remote Yorkshire Wolds.

Life as a young boy on a farm engendered a lifelong passion for wildlife and conservation. As a child he was forever collecting, recording, and preserving the animals and birds that he saw about him.

Now he travels the world collecting wildlife reference material for his original paintings. He frequently combines his trips with conservation work and uses his paintings to foster the urge to preserve animals and birds in their natural habitat in others.

He recently used a trip to Tanzania to highlight the plight of wild dogs in Africa . He also donates a percentage of the sales of some of his prints to a number of conservation charities, including a project currently conserving tigers in India and to Save the Albatross.

Closer to home, Robert is a founding member of the Wolds Barn Owl Group, which aims to buck the decline in barn owls in the Yorkshire Wolds by providing boxes on farmland.

Robert studied fine art at York BTEC College and went on to study wildlife illustration at the Carmarthen College of Art & Technology in South Wales , where he was awarded ‘Student of the Year' in 1994.

The depth of work behind each of his paintings is the quality people most admire about his work. It can take him up to three months to produce each picture. He will spend weeks just watching and photographing his subject before he finally returns to his studio to compose a picture.

Then, he works in a variety of mediums from oils to acrylics and pencil, labouring over every detail.

“Sometimes I will spend all day just painting an eye on a tiger.”

Publications and Television

Among Robert's first art works to be published were illustrations for a bird-watching book which Robert's father Richard was also involved with. Bird Watching in East Yorkshire was published by Hutton Press in 1989.

This collaboration continued in 1995 when they fronted a documentary about the wildlife on Richard Fuller's farm for Yorkshire Television, entitled Fuller's Earth .

More recently, he was filmed on Look North building and putting up barn owl boxes for the Wolds Barn Owl Group. And his latest trip to Tanzania to photograph wild dogs was featured on the programme in March 2008.

Exhibitions

Robert's first exhibition at the Talent Fine Arts gallery in Malton was a sell out.

By the age of 20, he was being compared by journalists to Rodger McPhail, the artist whose work graces Finest Scotch Whiskey's ‘Famous Grouse' bottles. Under a year later, he was exhibiting alongside McPhail in Paris 's La Musee de la Chasse et de la Nature.

In 1994, Robert exhibited at London 's Tyron Gallery in Cork Street , where David Shepherd first launched his career.

Robert now holds two exhibitions a year at his own gallery at Fotherdale Farm, Thixendale, North Yorkshire .

He also runs a successful business selling greetings cards and prints of his paintings. The National Trust, WWF and RSPB are among his latest clients.

Robert Today

Robert's paintings are bought by art-lovers across the globe. But they are particularly valued in Britain as a record and a celebration of British wildlife.

More than 3,000 people attended his latest exhibition at the gallery at Fotherdale Farm, which is also his home.

The farmhouse, which he shares with his wife Victoria, his two dogs, and resident kestrel, was recently converted to accommodate a studio and gallery with help from a rural enterprise grant.