Drawn to help vital causes fighting environmental crime

(c) Gary Hodges

(c) Gary Hodges

Now let me give you a bit of background information. I’ve been working professionally as a wildlife artist since 1989. During that time, my career has skyrocketed to heights way beyond my wildest dreams, with my art winning many prestigious awards and selling at iconic landmarks such as the Natural History Museum, the Savoy, the Royal Geographical Society and Harrods. It hangs in the homes of many thousands of people worldwide, including those of Martina Navratilova, Virginia McKenna, Kristin Davis and Dame Daphne Sheldrick.

My drawings are all created in many shades of grey using graphite pencils. I feel the absence of colour helps me highlight the very individual characters, textures and tones that all animals have in abundance.

I’m passionate about wildlife and especially adore elephants, both drawing them and being with them. I feel so privileged to have spent some of the best times of my life being surrounded by these gentle giants in their homelands of Africa and Asia.

Why EIA? Let me briefly explain my long history with the organisation. It started even before the charity was born as my partner of 37 years is Dave Currey, one of the co-founders and a senior undercover investigator at EIA for 25 long and fruitful years.

During those years, Dave and I regularly went out for long relaxed meals after his harrowing trips. He’d wind down by telling me about the horrendous scenes the team had witnessed, the awful evidence they’d uncovered but also the great people they met in the field who gave Dave hope for the future. What also kept him going was the knowledge that through his skills as a photographer and writer he was able to share these atrocities with the world, via magazines, newspapers and TV. Away on these trips for months each year, he often worked 50, 60, 70 hours a week and eventually something had to give. He retired from EIA in 2008.

Many other dedicated people at EIA also became close friends and cemented my desire to help them in the best way I could, through my pencil drawings. I’ve happily given EIA a few thousand prints to benefit their work but I wanted to do more. So in 1994 I had a solo exhibition for Born Free and EIA and was ecstatic when the week long show was a sell-out and raised £90,000 for the two charities to help them continue their ground-breaking work.

It has taken me nearly 22 years to build up the courage and enough drawings and prints to hold another solo show. I really want this latest exhibition to surpass everything in my past and my ultimate goal is to raise at least £160,000, maybe much more, towards the preservation of wildlife. And I hope you can help me in achieving that!

(c) Gary Hodges

The exhibition entitled Heart & Soul will feature 150 of my limited edition prints and original drawings and represents 36 years of my creative life. They’ll all be on show and for sale at the huge Mall Galleries, minutes from Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square. Go to my website for more info, then either buy tickets to the private view gala on the evening of April 18 if you want to bid on any of the original drawings, or visit the exhibition which runs from April 19-23, 2016 if it’s prints you’re after. Alternatively, you can visit the show to simply look at my art. It is free entry during these times.

There will be something for most pockets, ranging from £24 for an unframed limited edition print up to many thousands of pounds for some of my rare original drawings. I’m certainly not a prolific artist, drawing just two or three pictures most years.

By the way, some of my limited edition prints published in the late 1980s and 1990s have sold in recent times for up to £3,500 on the secondary art market. Similarly, my original drawings too have resold at Christie’s Auction House for many times their initial prices. So by buying my art, you’ll be helping to give elephants and other animals a brighter future and also be investing in your own.

Many thanks for continuing to support the essential and innovative work of my hard-working friends at EIA. Without them, millions of innocent animals would have died.

Foot note … In a few weeks’ time I will be publishing a brand new project that will benefit both EIA and Born Free and will also tie in with the exhibition. Please look out for details of it very soon.