Hornbill Series : Montrose Hornbill

In the Hornbill Series, John Moore turns his attention to one of Africa’s most distinctive birds, exploring the hornbill as both creature and character. Each portrait is rendered with intricate line work, celebrating the bird’s extraordinary forms, textures and unmistakable silhouette.

Encircling the birds are a constellation of hand-drawn symbols and glyph-like marks. These shift the works beyond natural-history portraiture, suggesting an imagined visual language, part ancient marking, part map, part message. The circular composition gives each hornbill an almost emblematic presence, as though captured within its own world or seal.

Across the series, individual species reveal remarkably different personalities: watchful, imposing, inquisitive, even slightly eccentric. Together, the works celebrate biodiversity while inviting the viewer to consider the stories, signals and hidden languages that exist within the natural world.