Artist Simon Barlow

My life as a professional artist began at the age of 16, when I sold a painting of a Peregrine Falcon to a school friend's parents, while at boarding school in the Zimbabwean bush. Inspired by an artist friend, our mutual hobby of egg-collecting, and a love of all things natural, bird painting soon occupied me more than school work. Even after graduating from art school with a diploma in graphic design, painting birds was preferable to working in an advertising agency.

Living and working in the Cape, South Africa, I promoted my work holding solo exhibitions, which attracted commissions and established my career in the genre. The highlight of that period was the publication of Gamebirds of Southern Africa, a lavish coffee-table book featuring the 21 upland gamebird species from Southern Africa.

After moving to Australia, I changed my genre and medium. From delicate birds painted with fine sable brushes in watercolour, I moved to painting large floral studies with bristle brushes and oil. This was prompted not only by the financial necessities of living in a new country and working in a different market, but it was the perfect opportunity to start 'painting'- which I had always wanted to do. Since then, painting mainly floral studies has been the vehicle via which I have taught myself to paint on canvas. The subject was still of a natural nature, providing me with a vast choice of subjects, and had wide appeal.

I have approached the floral compositions as landscapes, rather than studies of arrangements. I have found myself drawn into the complex and varied colours, textures and structures that make up these compositions. Using dramatic lighting and a large format, and inspired by artists like the Baroque artist Caravaggio, these paintings express the wonder these extentions of the plant kingdom hold for me. Although I work in a representative, or realistic style, flowers are quite surreal to me. The'organs of reproduction' of plants, they sprout, bloom and die, representing the cycle of life and every earthly organism's mortality.

I have held several self promoted exhibitions in Sydney since 2001, completed commissions and promote my work online. I am represented by Studio Gallery Group