Fine Art Animal Paintings by Tom Chapman - Birds, Wildlife, and Sea Life

Tom Chapman's fine art animal paintings cover a lot more ground than most people expect when they first find his work. The thoroughbred racing paintings and the Hall of Champions portraits get most of the attention - and there are good reasons for that - but Tom has been painting birds, North American wildlife, and tropical reef scenes in oil for years alongside the equestrian catalog. These are not secondary work. They are painted to the same standard, with the same materials, and with the same seriousness of observation that makes his horse paintings what they are.

This article covers what is in those collections, how each one was approached technically, and what is currently available to buy or commission.

The Bird Paintings - Realistic Animal Portraiture Across Species and Format

Tom's bird collection sits in an interesting place within his broader body of work. He has painted songbirds, hawks, parrots, and chickens - not as a series built around a single style or format, but each subject approached on its own terms. The result is a set of pieces that vary considerably in scale, surface, and approach.

The Indigo Bunting painting is 8x8 inches, painted on a gallery-wrapped canvas with the sides painted to match the image - no frame required. The Indigo Bunting is a finch species that ranges east of the Rocky Mountains from southern Canada down to the Gulf of Mexico. The male's coloring is a deep, saturated blue that reads differently in oil than in a photograph - there is a warmth and translucency to it that only oil can produce at that color temperature. Tom painted two of them together. Prints are available in 10x10 on canvas stretched on wooden stretcher bars, Each comes with a certificate of authenticity.

The Rainbow Lorikeet painting takes a different approach - it is a close-cropped 12x12 inch view of a single bird, painted on gallery-wrapped canvas with edges finished and no frame included. Tom painted this from direct observation at the San Francisco Zoo, which used to maintain an enclosure where visitors could walk in with small cups of sugar water and the birds would land on them directly. That firsthand observation is evident in the painting - the posture is specific, not generic. The canvas edges are painted, and the piece is ready to hang as-is.

The Red Tailed Hawk is the most formally unusual piece in the bird section. Tom started a series of bird paintings on small wooden ovals and disks - a departure from canvas entirely. The Red Tailed Hawk is painted on a birch wood disk sealed with acrylic varnish, wired on the back and ready to hang. It is a one-of-a-kind piece. There is no edition, no print run. The wooden surface gives the paint a different quality from canvas - denser, with less give - and the circular format changes how the composition works. It suits a hawk painting in a way that a rectangular canvas would not.

Tom has also painted the Stellar's Jay (the Camp Robber painting) and the Spotted Towhee, among others. The bird work as a whole is an example of what realistic animal portraiture looks like when the painter is genuinely curious about the subject rather than producing a category of product.

The Wildlife Collection - North American Animals in Original Oil

The wildlife collection is the section of Tom's fine art animal paintings that is changing most actively right now. The two most recent additions - the Grizzly Bear (18x24 inches, $1,400) and the Black Panther original oil (22x22 inches, $2,500) - are both originals with no prints currently available.

Wildlife painting requires a different kind of preparation from portrait work. Tom cannot learn a grizzly bear from the saddle the way he learned horses. What he brings to it is anatomical discipline - the understanding of how weight distributes through a large animal, how musculature shows under fur or hide, how light behaves differently on different coat textures. These are skills that transfer from twenty years of equestrian painting, applied to new subjects with the same realist methodology.

The lioness painting that has appeared in Chapman Fine Arts promotional material is a useful reference point. The animal is mid-motion, the background dark, the brushwork decided. Tom has talked about the eyes of exceptional animals - a specific quality of alertness and presence that certain horses had, that he noticed in Secretariat and Zenyatta and Barbaro among others. That same quality of attention carries into how he approaches wildlife subjects. He is looking for what makes a particular animal specific, not what makes it generically animal-shaped.

The wildlife collection is smaller than the equestrian catalog by volume, but it is not filler work. When new pieces arrive - Tom has more wildlife paintings in progress - they go into the same collection at comparable price points.

The Sea Life Paintings - Original Oil Paintings in a Different Register Entirely

The Sea Life collection is where Tom's fine art animal paintings become something most collectors do not associate with his name until they see it. These are tropical reef paintings - vivid, color-saturated, technically distinct from everything else in the catalog.

Tom built the backgrounds of the sea life series exclusively with his fingers. No brushes on the reef backgrounds - the coral textures, the water color gradations, the depth of field - all of it applied by hand. The fish were painted with brushes, or a combination of fingers and brushes depending on what the subject demanded. This is not a gimmick. Working directly with fingers gives the painter immediate control over how colors blend at the edge, and the texture it produces in a background is physically different from what a brush creates. For reef paintings, where the background needs weight and organic variation, it works.

The current sea life paintings available as originals at Chapman Fine Arts:

• 3 Surgeons, 3 Angels, and a Parrot - 16x20 inches, $1,200

• Angels, Butterflies, and Tangs - 16x20 inches, $1,200

• Butterfly Fish and Coral Reef - 16x20 inches, $1,000

• Clown Fish and Sea Anemone - 16x20 inches, $800

• Color Cornucopia - 16x20 inches, $900

• Tropical Reef, Butterflies and Tang - 16x20 inches, $900

• Tropical Salad - 16x20 inches, $800

All are original oil paintings. None are currently available as prints. They ship within one day of purchase unless bought on a weekend. Free shipping on all pieces.

What Is Available as Prints vs. Originals

For collectors deciding between original oil paintings and prints, the position varies by collection. The bird series has a mix - some pieces like the Indigo Bunting have companion prints on canvas, while pieces like the Red-tailed Hawk on birch wood disk are originals only and unique by nature. The wildlife originals currently have no print editions. The sea life paintings are all originals.

If you are looking to buy original paintings online and want to browse the full range of what Tom has available across all subjects - horses, birds, wildlife, and sea life - the original paintings collection and the signed and numbered canvas prints pages both have filtering that lets you see what is in stock.

For anything not listed, Tom is open to commissions across all subjects. If you want a specific bird species, a wildlife subject he has not yet painted, or a reef scene with different species than what is currently available, the conversation starts with a phone call.

Chapman Fine Arts