The Fox Before the Exhibition

I've been back in New Zealand for less than a week and I'm already covered in pastel dust.

There's a fox on my easel. Red, alert, with that particular quality foxes have of looking like they know something you don't. I'm trying to finish it before the end of the month, which means early mornings and the kind of concentration where you suddenly realise it's three o'clock and you've forgotten to eat lunch.

I need to tell you about the fox first, before I tell you about the exhibition.

The allotments

When I lived in London, there was a family of foxes in the allotments behind my house. I say "family" loosely, because foxes aren't especially family-minded creatures, but they shared the same patch of ground and tolerated each other in the way urban wildlife learns to tolerate things. Including people like me, who would stand very still at the back fence hoping not to frighten them away.

I watched them for years.

I knew which gap in the fence they used and roughly what time they'd appear. I learned that if you stay quiet long enough, a fox eventually decides you're part of the landscape and goes back to doing whatever it was doing before you arrived.

Then one evening, a cub came to find me.

Not the other way around. I wasn't hiding behind anything or waiting with my camera. I was simply sitting outside when this tiny ball of fluff appeared from beside the garage and looked straight up at me with the particular directness that fox cubs have. As though it had something important to tell me and was mildly surprised I hadn't worked it out already.

That was the moment I knew I'd paint foxes one day.

What you miss

There are no foxes in New Zealand.

That's probably good news for the birds.

But I miss them.

You don't realise how much your sense of a place is built from its wildlife until you move somewhere else and notice the absence of things you never consciously counted.

I went back to the UK this month partly to photograph. I came home with hundreds of images, a notebook full of sketches, and the particular kind of tiredness that comes from trying to notice everything before it's time to leave again.

The fox painting comes from one of those memories of my London garden. But really, it comes from the allotments. From years of standing still and paying attention.

I think that's what reference photographs really do. They give your hand something to follow while your memory does the actual work.

Two places, one exhibition

The NZ Artists Exhibition at Cashmere Primary has always felt like a wonderfully generous event. Local artists, a community school, people wandering through on a winter evening with a glass of wine and an open mind. This will be my first time exhibiting there, and I'm really looking forward to it.

This year I'm bringing work from both worlds.

Some of the paintings are of the birds that have become part of my life here. The kotare that appears beside a stream when you least expect it. The fantail that insists on following you through the bush as though you've somehow become part of its day. The kererū making its magnificent, heavy-winged journey through the kōwhai.

Others are of the wildlife I grew up with. The hare in a summer field. The robin in winter light. And now, the fox.

I didn't plan it that way.

It's simply where paying attention has led me.

Because when I look at these paintings together, I realise they were never really about the animals themselves.

They're about those brief moments when a wild creature lets you into its world for a few seconds. The flash of colour that catches your eye. The movement that makes you stop mid-step. The stillness afterwards, when you realise you've just been given something special, and you almost missed it.

Those quiet moments have become the thread running through everything I create. They're easy to overlook, but once you start noticing them, the world feels a little richer.

That's what I'm trying to put on a wall.

Not birds.

Not foxes.

Those moments.

Come and see

The NZ Artists Exhibition opens at Cashmere Primary School in Christchurch on Friday 31 July and runs until Sunday 2 August 2026.

Opening night is from 7pm to 10pm, and if you're local it's a lovely excuse to get out of the house on a winter Friday evening.

I'll be there.

The fox will be there.

So will the kotare, the fantail, the hare and a few others I haven't quite decided on yet.

If you come along, I'd love you to find me and tell me about a wildlife encounter you've had.

Every painting I create starts with a story like that.