1. David Measures
David was born in Warwick, he lived in the tiny Old Toll Cottage, tucked below Warwick Castle on the
banks of the river Avon. Nature called to him all his life, he said that "There is a magnet in me drawn to
the subtle sense-aura of wild freedom, the porous exchange apparent in wild places and the richness of
variety and subtlety which I miss inside a building. Paintings of butterflies used to be done entirely from
dead specimens. David was the first artist to paint them flying in their natural habitats. He studied at
colleges in mid-Warwickshire, then Bournemouth, and finally the Slade School of Art in London. David
found his inspiration in the lush local countryside. He stated that you have to be very quick and agile to
paint butterflies in flight, and your equipment must be light: a drawing pad, or sheets of paper clipped to
a board, and a tiny box of paints. David learned to do without brushes and water. Amazingly, his delicate,
energetic paintings were mostly done with his fingertips and spit; fine details were picked out with his
nails. He used a child's multicoloured biro to record his observations of what was going on, because he
wasn't creating pictures to hang on walls, but experiencing life as fully as one can. He wrote of the
importance of being able to be absolutely still. David developed an original technique using small rollers
and stencils to create luminous yet rigorous designs that capture permanence and transience. A couple
of his paintings of butterflies below.