Shipping the art is not included in the sale price. The item/items will be shipped directly from the artist. This is to mitigate damage to the art in transit. The majority of our artists are UK based, however, many are from South Afracica, Europe and the USA.
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Matthew was born in April 1989 in Nelspruit, a small town in Mpumalanga province in the north eastern part of South Africa and has always had a love for the bushveld in this area of the country. Nelspruit is just a 40 minute drive from the famous Kruger National Park, as well as many other well known game reserves and inspiration for his wildlife art was never far away.
In August 2015 Matthew relocated to Cape Town where his hobby soon became a full time business.
“A couple of years after moving to Cape Town, I started to draw more often again. I started up a Facebook page for my art which got a really good response. A few months later I took a bunch of drawings I had recently completed to a market to see if I could sell one or two of them. The response was incredible and that weekend I sold almost everything I had! I then realized that I could actually be onto something. So, a month later I quit my job that I had at the time to spend more time on my art. Four years on and my art business has gone from strength to strength, with the demand for both prints and originals increasing all the time. Also, my drawings are definitely getting better and better over time!”
One doesn’t come across pencil art nearly as often as painting but pencil is the only medium Matthew was ever interested in using.
“I love working with pencils and have never really considered using any other medium. My drawings are very much about the finer details and perfectly capturing my subject and all the feelings and emotion within it. With pencil, I feel I can do this by being perfectly in control, not missing a single detail.”
Each drawing is ‘constructed’ using many layers of pencil, whether colour or graphite. These normally start with the lightest colours, working into darker layers as the drawing progresses.
A slightly textured paper, Fabriano Academia 200gram, is what he uses for the original drawings This helps to make the layering more effective. Almost as important as the actual subject in Matthew’s artwork, is the blank space surrounding it. This places all the focus on the subject and creates an impact unique to Matthew’s work.
The reason for assessing this species as Near Threatened and not Least Concern continues to be the continued and high poaching threat and illegal demand for horn in SE Asia (especially Viet Nam and China), increased involvement of organised international criminal syndicates in rhino poaching (see Emslie
et al. (2019)
http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/156/1560170144.pdf for further details). Protection efforts depend on significant Range State expenditure and effort, and if these were to decline rampant poaching could seriously threaten numbers (well in excess of 30% over three generations). Declining state budgets for conservation in real terms, declining capacity in some areas and increasing arrests of Southeast Asians for rhino crimes in African Range States are all of concern. Estimated White Rhino numbers have declined 15% from 2012–17 in response to increased poaching. This decline has largely been because of a major decline in the largest subpopulation in Greater Kruger due to poaching. While absolute numbers poached in this park continue to decline, so have White Rhino numbers with the result that in relative terms poaching has remained at unsustainable levels. Fortunately, White Rhino numbers have been increasing in many other populations and since White Rhino poaching peaked in 2014 it has declined in response to considerably increased law enforcement and protection efforts. Reported poaching in the major Range State South Africa is also down in 2019. While the White Rhino is close to having less than 10,000 mature individuals, it would not meet any other of the additional criteria under C1 or C2.
In summary the rationale for treating White Rhino as Near Threatened and not Least Concern is that in the numbers could decline significantly in the absence of, or significant reduction of current conservation measures. Despite White Rhino point estimates declining by an estimated 15% from 2012–17, numbers are nowhere near reaching critical thresholds under criteria A2 or A4 (see Figures 4 and 5 and Tables 4 and 5 in the attached Supplementary Information document). Recorded White Rhino poaching has been declining since 2014.
SOURCE: IUCN REDLIST
