Media Coverage

Chris Furse not only paints superb watercolours of birds, he finds them in inhospitable parts of the world first. Words by Malcolm Triggs

With a CV that read: artist, illustrator, ornithologist, author, lecturer, Royal Navy engineer and (wait for it!) Antarctic expedition leader, Chris is someone with whom many an accountant, decorator or even engine driver would gladly swap careers.

If painting watercolours of birds sounds like a fairly sedate twist to such an exciting tale, think again. Chris and wife Vikky have just returned from Kap Tobin, East Greenland, where they stayed in a hut while painting the wildlife and taking in the incredible scenery.

“We had a wonderful two to three weeks, with the winter ice beginning to arrive, sunsets reflected in lanes of water with staggering beauty, gyr falcons perching on the huts and the Northern Lights drifting from horizon to horizon and directly over us. It was like a firework display in heaven, except eerily silent, the only noise the mutter of ice-floes on the shore.

Having achieved so much already, it comes as no surprise to find that Chris’ ambitions include joining a field expedition by the Artists for Nature Foundation and to win membership of the Society of Wildlife Artists.

Ironically, he turned down an earlier opportunity to fulfil one of those ambitions when he failed to take up two invitations from Keith Shackleton to join the SWLA, which the latter helped to form.

That invitation followed a spell in which Chris worked as ornithologist for a joint Services Expedition to Elephant Island in the Antarctic (the site of Shackleton's landfall).

"For four months I mapped and counted breeding penguins, petrels and other seabirds and studied their foraging routines. After that I organised and let two more Antarctic expeditions myself, putting ornithology above my art".

Although he was selling a few paintings between expeditions, it was in 1981, while serving in the Royal Navy as a Dagger Marine Engineer, Commander, that Chris had his first commission.

"My first frigate visited Aberdeen and an Antarctic doctor friend took me to a University party. I failed to charm a young lady, but she handed me over to her husband, a lecturer in Behavioural Sciences and a keen birdman, who was writing a book on the Shelduck. He asked me to illustrate it and Cambridge University Press paid me."

Nowadays Chris's work is in great demand, with both his illustrations (he has contributed to various bird books and reports) and his paintings finding a growing audience among both bird and art-lovers.

Chris was interested in birds from an early age, and discovered at 12 that just watching them was not enough.

"So I started drawing birds on the farm," he went on." Both my parents were artists, but it was in the sixth form that my biology master triggered my natural style, giving me the pleasure of powerful drawing when sketching beansprouts at furious speed. I have been drawing birds in the field ever since."

Contact Chris at Hegg Hill Oast, Smarden, Kent TN27 8NX, tel: 01233 770 360 or email@ furses@hegghill.fsnet.co.uk