Thomas Jackson - ‘Natives’

Water Color and Gouache on Archers // 10.6” x 14.9" // **SOLD**

Moving to Sydney, Australia as a child, Thomas Jackson was instantly drawn to the natural wildlife of this new country. Fascinated by the local animals and landscapes, he drew inspiration from his new home, as well as scientific plant and animal specimens, entomology and taxidermy.’
Today, Thomas puts a modern take on ‘Natural History Illustration’, painstakingly creating smaller scale works for galleries and translating these into large scale public murals.
In this new body of works ‘Florilegium’ ,Thomas gathers inspiration from his everyday scenes and local environment. Gathering plant and animal specimens on his day to day to create an illustrative look into the wonderful wildlife native to his local surrounds.
Adventuring into national and local parks of his Sydney home, Thomas finds beautiful, rare and even dangerous local animals to masterfully house between the eucalypts abundant within these regions.
In Latin a florilegium (plural florilegia) was a compilation of excerpts from other writings. The word is from the Latin flos (flower) and legere (to gather): literally a gathering of flowers, or collection of fine extracts from the body of a larger work. It was adapted from the Greek anthologia “anthology”, with the same etymological meaning.