User:Idyllic press/Victor Andrews

Victor Andrews (1922 -) South African wildlife painter.

Biography
He has worked variously as a copywriter, cartoonist and commercial artist with a Cape newspaper and in advertising agencies in Johannesburg. Though always interested in wildlife, Vic spent many years painting seascapes and landscapes along the Ciskei and Transkei coast, and in Natal and the western Cape.

After settling in the Transvaal he started roaming further afield. He sketched and painted in the wilder regions of Rhodesia, Northern Mozambique and in the grass reserves of the Eastern Transvaal, the Usutu River region of Northern Natal and in Zululand.

When access to Northern Mozambique became more difficult, Vic moved his reserches across to the western desert areas of Botswana and worked in the Chobe reserve and on the Kasane River. Amply rewarded by the vast expanse of desert and its plains game, he has spent the past few years mostly in painting the animals and birds of the Etosha Pan and the Kalahari Gemsbok Park.

Though primarily adept and skilful at capturing the various moods of the African bush in oils on some impressive and panoramic canvases, Vic has turned rather naturally to the faster and more direct medium of pastels.

Perhaps the most evident and welcome quality which will greet the viewer of Vic's paintings is the sincerity and integrity with which each work is executed. This concern for his subject is reflected in his various donations of paintings in fund-raising efforts to several wildlife organizations.

In 1985 Vic and his wife Dulcie, left Gauteng to settle in the small Karoo town of Montagu. Seduced no doubt by the quiet charm of the western Cape, Vic has once again started to paint the surrounding lanscapes and the flowering expanses of Namaqualand.

One man exhibitions
1969 South African Association of Arts, Pretoria 1972 Carlton Gallery, Johannesburg 1974 Phalaborwa 1976 Kempel's Gallery, Pretoria 1979 Palmerston North, New Zealand 1980 Wellington, New Zealand 1982 Lister gallery, Johannesburg 1991 Bedford gallery, Johannesburg 2010 Montagu Museum, Western Cape

Group Exhibitions
1973 Lister gallery, Johannesburg 1973 Herbert Evans Gallery, Johannesburg 1973 Sandown Gallery, Johannesburg 1973 World Wildlife Exhibition, Amsterdam 1973 Totonto, Canada 1974 Lister gallery, Johannesburg 1974 Gallery van Rijn, Pretoria 1975 Abercrombe & Fitch, New York 1975 Hemingway African Gallery, New York 1977 Wilderness Congress, Johannesburg 1977 Lister Gallery, Johannesburg 1978 Lister Gallery, Johannesburg 1980 Lister Gallery, Johannesburg 1981 Lister Gallery, Johannesburg 1998 Montagu Inn, Montagu 1998 Cape Gallery, Cape Town