Lyndsey Selley

Contemporary Wildlife & Animal Artist | Expressive wildlife art shaped by 25 years of painting animals

Lyndsey Selley is a British contemporary wildlife artist with more than 25 years’ experience painting animals, combining accomplished realism with increasingly expressive brushwork, colour and experimental mark-making. Drawing on a background in design and decades spent studying animal form, Selley creates original paintings and limited editions that capture not only the physical beauty of her subjects, but their individual character, strength and presence.

Having established her career through highly detailed wildlife painting, Selley has deliberately evolved her practice beyond traditional realism. Her current work moves between precise observation and spontaneous contemporary techniques, using broad brushstrokes, drips, splashes of colour and decorative elements to create animal art designed to hold its own within both contemporary and traditional interiors. In her equestrian paintings, this experimentation extends to intricate design and gold leaf, bringing an almost armour-like or fairground quality to the horses while retaining the anatomy, light and muscle tone that underpin her work.

First-hand observation remains central to Selley’s wildlife art. Her paintings of lions and other African wildlife are informed by her own safari experiences and photography, including time spent in the Maasai Mara, allowing fleeting expressions and behaviours witnessed in the wild to become the starting point for finished works. For Selley, the eyes are particularly important; the point at which an animal’s individuality and inner character become most apparent.

Horses and stags are equally significant subjects within her collection. Selley is drawn to the strength and structure of horses and the sculptural presence of a stag’s antlers, often contrasting areas of realism with energetic colour and freer mark-making. Music has even become part of her experimental process, with rhythm and movement encouraging more instinctive brushwork, splatters and drips in some of her equestrian compositions.

Now returning to Wyecliffe Galleries with her first major collection at the gallery in several years, Selley presents new original paintings alongside the Wyecliffe debut of her limited editions. From powerful stags and expressive horses to lions observed on safari, the collection marks an exciting evolution in an established wildlife artist’s practice; balancing technical experience with the freedom to continually explore new ways of seeing and portraying the animal world.