Read this Wildlife Art Journal article

   
James Stroud paints black zebra stripes with the same flourish of surface texture Vincent van Gogh brought to his sunflowers.  And, in laying down thick-hued splotches of paint with a palette knife, be it to accentuate an elephant’s trunk or rhinoceros horn, his technique—which is to say, Stroud’s way of seeing and sculpting paint —also summons thoughts of abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning.  The artist doesn't compare himself to those European masters, but others do.
 
Stroud is practically unknown to collectors in North America and the UK.  This South African, classically trained as a studio painter, wields a contemporary flair in his portrayal of African animals and the landscapes they haunt.  What sets him apart and catches the eye is mesmerizing surface topography. The hardscrabble furrows read like a map, reflecting of tensions in his own country and Stroud’s mind itself.

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head.  If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart,” Nelson Mandela once said. Stroud sees art as a common universal dialect.  While many 21st century wildlife artists invoke Realists like Robert Bateman, Bob Kuhn, Carl Rungius and Wilhelm Kuhnert, Stroud’s pathfinders are European masters.  Like Rembrandt, van Gogh and de Kooning, Stroud paints in the method known as impasto. Architecturally, he builds canyons of pattern and color using globs of oil squeezed fresh from the tube, adding layers wet that transmit a feel of...