Richard Allen
Richard Allen is a wildlife artist and illustrator based in Wivenhoe on the Essex coast. He is originally from Newbury in Berkshire, took an art foundation course at Brighton and a degree in graphic design and illustration at Kingston Polytechnic, and graduated in 1987.
He started out as a freelance illustrator working mainly in scraperboard for advertising, publishing, packaging and newspapers, and his work moved towards birds and wildlife after he won British Birds Bird Illustrator of the Year in 1993. He moved to Essex in 1988. His illustrations appear in Concise Birds of the Western Palearctic for Oxford University Press, The Handbook of Birds of the World for Lynx Editions, A Field Guide to the Birds of South East Asia for New Holland, and Sunbirds and Flowerpeckers for Bloomsbury, which he illustrated alone. He has also designed stamps and made interpretation illustrations for conservation bodies including the RSPB and the National Trust.
He has returned to printmaking, and his book of linocuts, Coastal Birds, was published by Jardine Press in 2014.
Artist Statement
I am an artist and illustrator based in East Anglia amid the creeks and marshes of the Essex coast. My great passion is the natural world, particularly birds, and I enjoy the challenge of sketching and painting them directly from life in the field in all weathers. The Colne estuary near my home in Wivenhoe provides plenty of inspiration, especially in winter when large flocks of waders and wildfowl flock to the coast.
I enjoy the immediacy of working directly from nature, trying to capture the life and vitality of wild birds, and the patterns of plumage, light, water and foliage.