Read this Wildlife Art Journal article

David Shepherd is the United Kingdom's best-known painter of wild animal scenes now and probably for the last century, says Simon Trapnell, director of England’s Nature in Art Museum.

Shepherd’s Realistic portrayals of African, North American and Asian charismatic megafauna over the last 50 years have attracted a wide legion of admirers around the world.

These facts are irrefutable accolades and they have turned Shepherd into a ready target for derision by critics.  Some members of the fine art establishment in England have scorned him while his work represents grist for students and academics in art schools exploring the open-ended existential questions: 
What is art?
What is good art?
Accompanying those queries is a topical corollary: Can art raise human consciousness about threats imperiling our own survival?
Like his contemporary in Canada, Robert Bateman, who similarly has achieved phenomenal commercial success with the sale of printed reproductions of original works, Shepherd has been irrepressibly outspoken as an environmentalist.

Refreshing is that the man’s accessibility in his art and his wide-ranging opinions have made him the antithesis of smug elitism. Bombastic at times, charming and modest at his own discretion—and always entertaining in conversation—Shepherd is admittedly egotistical, passionate, earnest, fearless, and a self-professed workaholic.  That makes him dangerous, rhetorically speaking, in the eyes of those accustomed to having measured, courtly exchanges.

“I have never believed in holding back when speaking what is on my mind,” Shepherd said during a telephone interview.  “And right now, what is on my...