Robert Greenhalf is one of the country’s leading wildlife artists and is dedicated to capturing his images in the field.

His passion for sketching and observing birds and animals in their own environment gives his work great freedom and a real sense of immediacy. All of his watercolours and many of his printing plates are taken from life.

Robert Greenhalf was born in 1950 at Haywards Heath, Sussex, England. He studied at Eastbourne and Maidstone Colleges of Art, graduating in 1971 with a Diploma in Art and Design in Graphics.
Robert works in Woodcut, Oils and Watercolour. His subjects are mainly Birds and other Wildlife. He places great emphasis upon observing and sketching in the field and his Watercolours are frequently made directly from life. The Oils and Woodcuts are created in the studio, using field sketches and watercolours as reference.
Robert was elected a Member of the Society of Wildlife Artists 1981 and a member of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1982.
He is a member of a group known as the Artists for Nature Foundation, a charity formed in 1991 to focus attention on threatened areas of the World.
For four years, from 1993, Robert visited the Parc des Ecrins in the French Alps as Artist in Residence. In 1999 he was commissioned to provide illustrations of birds for their Atlas of the Invertebrates of the Parc des Ecrins.
He has also had work hung in the Summer Show at the Royal Academy on several occasions. His work is in Public and Private collections throughout the World.
Method of Working
All of Robert’s works start in the field with observing, sketching, and often watercolour studies of his subject from life. Sometimes watercolours are completed in the field, or he may work up compositions from my sketches in the studio. Painting directly from life can add a spontaneity to the work, but often it is difficult to finish the picture without the light changing, or the subjects flying away! Robert also produces oils and woodcuts. Both of these techniques he uses in the studio, where memory and imagination can also inform the work. He paints his oils on primed hardboard. The woodcuts usually employ five or six blocks of plywood, hardboard or lino: one for each colour.