our culture: ART FEATURE
The Man From Liverpool
A local wildlife artist is quite content in Texas after
winging it across the Big Pond for love
JANUARY 2016
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
BY MEL RHODES
It’s the little things that make a life,
seemingly chance encounters, even
an unsolicited e-mail.
One day in 2010, a local woman
stopped in at the Manna store in
Weatherford and in sifting through
the many items for sale came upon
a wildlife painting she fancied. She
bought it, hung it on her wall, and
became curious. What followed was
a crisscrossing of lives that changed
hers forever.
She set out to find out more about
the painting and its maker, trying
to track him down on the Internet.
His signature on the painting was
all she had to go on. Unfortunately,
she searched for a couple of years
without success before thinking in
2012 she might not have the name
right. “Hmmm. Maybe it’s not
Prescoss but Prescott?” she mused.
She typed in “David Prescott”
and, voila! there he was, a rather
friendly looking chap from Liverpool,
England. After four or five months of
back and forth e-mail chatter, David
decided a trip across the Big Pond
was in order.
“She’d bought one of my
paintings and wanted to know if it
was the original painting,” David
recalled. “After she told me what
she’d bought it for, I said I hope it
isn’t the original painting! It sold for a
heck of a lot more money than that.
Anyway, we ended up falling in love
and getting married [in 2013]. And
today I’m living here full-time again
[in the US].”
David’s trip to Texas to set eyes
on the woman who would become
his wife was not his first foray into
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the broad expanses of America. He
came to Southern California in 1978
and spent two decades painting
wildlife in the San Bernardino
Mountains area. During this time he
lived in the mountains and “rubbed
elbows” with his wild neighbors —
black bear, bobcats, cougars, etc.
His mountain days or “heaven”
David Prescott
ended when his father fell ill and
he returned to England to care for
him. He’d been back in Great Britain
some 15 years when the e-mails from
Weatherford began arriving and he
once again jumped continents.
“I think America is the only place
to live,” David said. “The people are
just fantastic. I prefer them over the