I'm Gareth Putter. I've been drawing since I was six and guiding through the wildest corners of southern Africa since I was eighteen. I create original African wildlife art, mostly in charcoal with the occasional oil, and I offer each piece as a museum-quality archival giclee print on cotton rag or canvas. Every line comes from time spent watching these animals up close, not from a photo on a screen.
As a guide I led walks and game drives and lectured groups of schoolchildren about the bush. By twenty I was working in Big Five country, and at twenty-one I was running overland safari tours across Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia.
The bush was never a job to me. It was the place I understood myself best.
Along the way I founded Rocking For Rhinos, a music festival built to fund rhino conservation, and later managed a safari park in Oman for a member of the royal family. For a while I worked as a wildlife tattoo artist here in Hoedspruit. Then my children were born, I came home for good, and I traded the tattoo machine for charcoal and oil paint.
But the drawing had been there all along. Turning to fine art wasn't a new beginning, it was a lifelong habit finally meeting the wildlife I'd spent twenty years living among. What I draw now, I have stood next to, and that is the difference you feel in the work.
I work almost entirely in charcoal, two ways. White charcoal on black Fabriano paper, my preferred surface, where the animal emerges out of the dark the way it would at last light. Or black charcoal on white paper or canvas, clean and stark, when the form carries the whole story on its own. Either way it comes down to light, shadow and texture, with nothing to hide behind.
Now and then a piece calls for colour and depth, and then I'll reach for oil. But charcoal is where I live.
Every piece is available as an archival giclee print, produced on cotton rag paper or canvas with pigment inks rated to last generations. Limited editions are hand-numbered and signed. And if you want something that doesn't exist yet, my commission list is open.
COMING SOON
I'm building a set of online courses to teach the techniques I use, charcoal and oil drawn from two decades in the field. Join the list and you'll be first to know when they open.
COMING SOON
I'll be running occasional auctions where collectors can acquire original work. Details to come. Join the list to hear about them first.
Before the art there was Rocking For Rhinos, the festival I founded to fund the fight against poaching, and years spent supporting the people doing the dangerous work on the ground. That history is the heart of this brand. Read the stories behind it.
I've stood with organisations doing the real work of protecting wildlife, from anti-poaching units to the vets who treat the survivors. As this brand grows, building structured support back into that work is where I'm taking it. If it matters to you too, come and follow the journey.
My social channels are where the bush comes to life: the daily reality behind the artwork, the animals themselves, and the conservation work worth knowing about. Come follow along.
