A kind and generous tutor, Mark is always full of ideas. With a PHD in Ecology he now spends all his time making art, as well as writing, editing and teaching.
An accomplished and unstoppable artist, Mark likes to move between media and genres and is happiest when he is learning either a new technique or a new approach to portraying the natural world. This could be abstract painting, collage, printmaking, sculpture or even song-writing. He is at least as interested in the processes involved in making art as in the results themselves and he takes this analytical approach through to his teaching. His artwork is, however, always based on direct field observation of wildlife and especially quick sketches to capture the essential spirit of the living world.
Mark is the author of the well reviewed RSPB Children’s Guide to Nature Watching, which has sold almost 30,000 copies.
Throughout his life Mark has been interested in the visual arts as well as literature and science, seeing no contradiction between these strands of human enquiry. He has brought them together successfully in various ways – through origami, ceramics, drawing and painting, poetry, writing, music and teaching. It is this blend of interests that perhaps marks him out as unusual in a field of specialists.