In David’s own words, “to start with, my life was a series of disasters”. Growing up in the 1930’s, his one ambition was to be a game warden in Kenya and so, on leaving school, he went to Kenya and was promptly told by the National Parks people that he was not wanted. On returning to England, David was faced with two choices. One was “to drive a bus for a living”. The other was to pursue the only other possibility, which was painting. However, he admits that he had very little interest in art and certainly no talent, for he was promptly rejected by the Slade School of Art as ‘un-trainable’.


By chance, David met Robin Goodwin, a professional artist, who took him under his wing. David believes, “as a challenge”! After three years with Robin Goodwin, David started his artistic career pursuing his first two loves, steam railways and aviation. It was the latter that led him to the Royal Air Force who began to fly him around the world as their guest and it was a trip to Aden in 1960, which changed his life. It seemed that everyone wanted a painting but, more important still, the Royal Air Force flew him down to Kenya where they commissioned him to paint his first wildlife painting and his career never looked back from that moment. It was on that same visit when he became a conservationist, when he found 255 dead zebra around a poisoned water hole.


On returning to London, David had his first one-man show of wildlife paintings. The exhibition sold out in the first twenty minutes and he has not looked back since! Apart for the tremendous demand for his originals, a number of which he donates to wildlife through the David Shepherd Conservation Foundation to pay back what in his own words is “my enormous debt to the animals I paint”, his published work is avidly sought after.


“No-one ever believes me when I say that I had no talent in art until I show them my very first unspeakably awful painting of birds which I still have. When they see it - everyone agrees! The only reason why I ever painted that bird picture was to escape playing rugger which terrified the life out of me when I was at school. My 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, my father suggested that I went to art school, but the Slade School of Fine Art saw my bird painting and told me to go and drive a bus. So my early life was, to put it mildly, a series of disasters.


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


After my training, I began painting English landscapes, aviation subjects, steam trains, portraits and all the other things that I am possibly not known for, but my career really took off at Heathrow Airprot when I was painting aircraft portraits from life. The RAF noticed these pictures and they invited me to travel all over the world with them as their guest, commissioning various aviation subjects. The catalyst in my career came in 1960 when they flew me down to Aden. I 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 me down to Nairobi where the RAF werwe 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 I had not even painted a rabbit, but I said ‘I’ll have a try’. That very first wildlife painting of a rhino chasing an aeroplane off a runway in Kenya changed my life and the rest is history.


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