David Shepherd Biography

No one ever believes David Shepherd when he say's that he had no talent in art until he showed them his very first unspeakably awful painting of birds which he still has. When they see it - everyone agrees! The only reason why  David Shepherd ever painted that birds picture was to escape playing rugger which terrified the life out of him when he was at school. David Shepherd s only ambition growing up was to be a game warden in Africa but that potential career failed before it started. Rather than driving a bus for a living, David Shepherd s father suggested that he went to art school, but the Slade School of Fine Art saw him bird painting and told him to go and drive a bus. So  David Shepherd s early life was, to put it mildly, a series of disasters.

 David Shepherd must be the classic example of someone being in the right place at the right time. If  David Shepherd had not gone to a certain cocktail party in Winchester in 1951, he would not be writing this. he was introduced to a professional painter who told him quite flatly that he had no intention of teaching him even if he did have talent, because he was too busy. However, when  David Shepherd showed him his bird painting, he saw in him someone so awful that he had to take him on as a challenge! If  David Shepherd had not met Robin Goodwin, he would be driving a bus up and down Oxford Street!

After my training,  David Shepherd began painting English landscapes, aviation subjects, steam trains, portraits and all the other things that he is possibly not known for, but his career really took off at Heathrow Airport when he was painting aircraft portraits from life. The RAF noticed these pictures and they invited him to travel all over the world with them as their guest, commissioning various aviation subjects. The catalyst in his career came in 1960 when they flew him down to Aden. he painted a painting called 'Slave Island' which, when showing it to the Commander-in-Chief, resulted in 48 commissions from, it seemed, everyone in that part of the world. However, they then offered to fly him down to Nairobi where the RAF were based in those days. They had saved £25 and they said, 'We'd like a painting but we don't want aeroplanes because we fly those all day. Do you do animals?' Up to that time he had not even painted a rabbit, but he said 'I'll have a try'. That very first wildlife painting of a rhino chasing an aeroplane off a runway in Kenya changed his life and the rest is history.

With a full order book of commissions as far as he can see ahead since that first wildlife picture, David s ambition has been not only to continue painting for all those super people who ask him to paint pictures for them, but now, through the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, to fulfil his passionate obligation to help so many critically endangered mammals on the brink of extinction who have done so much for him.

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