Clever Magazine, Vol. V, #1 " Aussie Artist " (www.clevermag.com)

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Aussie Sheepman who lives near Hell sketches wildlife in Africa

by Eric Shackle

From our "Art is where you find it" files...

Chris McClelland somehow manages a large Australian sheep station (ranch) yet finds time to sketch lions and elephants in the wilds of Africa, and earn recognition as one of the world's finest wildlife artists.

He has just returned from his sixth visit to Zimbabwe to his home on the 180,000 acre Tupra property, which he manages for the McLachlan family, his employers for 27 years. While Chris attends to 40,000 sheep, his wife Margie sells prints of his drawings on the Internet to art collectors around the world.

The Chris McCelland website greets the visitor with "The Ambush" drawing, a zebra being ambushed by two lions. Chris and Margie live 50 miles from the small town of Hay, in far western New South Wales. You'll find some of Chris's fine pencil sketches on that site, together with details of his unusual career. His natural talent was recognized at school where he won numerous art prizes.

His days as a jackeroo -- that's the Aussie name for a trainee cowboy (or should that be shepherd?) inspired a series of action drawings of buck-jumping nags (cayuses). Later, as a station manager he enjoyed playing polocross, and sometimes drew ponies he had ridden. One of his paintings was featured on the front cover of Polocross magazine.

In 1994 Chris, wife Margie and daughter Miranda spent three weeks on safari, traveling overland through East Africa. Chris concentrated on his video and also kept a detailed diary of their travels. Margie and Miranda shot numerous photographs of the scenery and the wildlife animals and birds.

On their return to Hay, Chris combined his diary and Margie's photographs into book form for his family, then decided to illustrate it as well with his own drawings. Four of those drawings went into a limited edition print set in April, 1996. A drawing entitled The River Horses won the Catani Drawing Award at that year's annual exhibition of the Wildlife Art Society of Australasia in Melbourne, the first professional exhibition Chris had entered.

"People are always asking: Why doesn't he draw Australian animals?" Margie said. "He draws African animals to relax from what he sees every day, at places he enjoys visiting. I think when he retires he will be drawing Aussie animals. He did draw an Australian wedge-tailed eagle to appease people."

Kenneth Jack, the only living Australian member of the Royal Watercolour Society of London, said "Chris is a very gifted all-round person to manage a large sheep station and be able to do all the relevant types of work that needs to be done to ensure that all runs smoothly. To think that the same hands move to pencil and paper and produce such sensitive drawings of animals in their landscape setting is nothing less than amazing."

And what do the local art critics think of Chris's work? "The drawings are superb - no wonder the prints are selling well," said Graham Smith, of the Riverina Gallery in Wagga Wagga.

Eric Shackle is a retired Australian journalist whose hobby is searching the Internet and writing about it. His work has been published by the New York Times (U.S.), Globe and Mail (Canada), Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) and Straits Times (Singapore). He is copy editor of Anu Garg's Ohio-based A Word A Day free newsletter, which is e-mailed five days a week to more than half a million wordlovers in 210 countries. He has written a free e-book, LIFE BEGINS AT 80 ... on the Internet. See also UNSHACKLED BY COMPUTER