With his focus on the board before him and a brush in his hand, Hough is simultaneously deep in the Australian bush and in his own world.

"When you become an artist, you are a lone operator, he says. "You are it."

Yet he is not alone. Hough is surrounded by creatures, great and small. His studio is a colour-filled menagerie of his own making. For he is an acclaimed wildlife artist.

In the paintings sprinkled around his creative space, native birds are perched on tree branches and fences. Dingo pups are playing, and a koala snoozes in a gum.

As Hough says of his own painting subjects, "I do a bit of fur as well as feathers".

More than depicting birds and animals in the bush, James Hough turns his paintings into tools for animal preservation.

He has donated works to help raise funds for wildlife organisations, and to heighten awareness of the battle to save native species.

"Our native wildlife needs a bigger voice, and it gets that through his art," says Tim Faulkner, well-known conservationist and the head of Aussie Ark, which was formed to help save the Tasmanian devil.

James Hough's combination of artistic talent and generosity has opened people's eyes to not just environmental issues but also his paintings.

As a result, many more eyes will soon see the work of James Hough, as his paintings feature in the Australian Geographic Society's calendar for 2020.

How James Hough's art has ended up in such an iconic calendar is a journey in itself. And it began with one painting.

JAMES Hough is a bushman at heart but was born by the sea. The 58-year-old grew up in Stockton.

"Back in those days people didn't have such things as native gardens as much," he recalls. "So wildlife virtually didn't exist in Stockton."

However, he had an escape. For generations, his mother's family had owned a farm on the Manning River, near Wingham. The family would frequently head north to the property. Young Jim would spend his time by the river, fishing, and walking in the bush.

But art was also in the boy's life.

His mother, Sybil, was a landscape artist, and he seemed to be following her trail, as he was constantly drawing.

"She didn't give a real lot away, but she'd always point me in the right direction," Hough says. "Her philosophy was you're best off doing it yourself. Learning it yourself."

Hough followed that philosophy. Apart from a few tips from his mother, he is self-taught: "It is the very best way to go about art, because you teach yourself your own style. You're not copying from anybody else, you're not looking like a Dobell or whatever."

Hough was fascinated by wildlife art. He loved thumbing through a book his older sister had given their parents, A Portfolio of Australian Birds, by William T. Cooper, a Newcastle-born painter once described by naturalist Sir David Attenborough as one of the best ornithological artists in the world.

Hough still has that book.

"I used to open this up and look at these pictures and think, 'How could somebody possibly paint that well. How beautiful is it?'," he says, while cradling the book.

"I think that was the jab that got me into wildlife really."

Many years later, Hough had lunch with Cooper a couple of times, seeking his advice about bird painting.

"He said, 'What you have to do, Jim, is you have to make a choice whether you want to follow the ornithologically correct way of drawing' - like he's done - 'or whether you want to paint a nice painting'."

For Hough, the most important goal is to create a beautiful painting.

"You get it as right as you can, but I don't sit there counting feathers, or getting calipers out and saying, 'The beak length should be this'. If it looks geometrically correct to me, and the colours and the feather formations are as close as I can get to how they should be, I'm happy with that."

Yet, as a teenager, James Hough never imagined he could pursue a career in wildlife painting.

He became a surveyor, working in the Upper Hunter and raising a family. At least that job allowed him to spend time outdoors, often near the bush.

But when his role changed, and he was spending more time confined to an office, Hough ventured into the bush via his art.

He began painting in 1999 but after a few years despaired that no one saw his work. Without telling him, Hough's wife, Leonie, took a selection of his works to Morpeth Gallery's Trevor Richards, who was renowned for exhibiting wildlife art.

"Jim had the unusual talent of painting wildlife but in a landscape setting, that's what set him apart," recalls Richards.

The gallery owner began showing Hough's art in 2002.

The following year, the father of two boys took the leap and left his surveying job to pursue painting full-time.

"I didn't want to die wondering whether it was really something I could make a go of," Hough says.

"It's a roller coaster ride. That was a hard thing to get used to, having a regular income one minute, then having to fight for every single sale yourself."

But the sales of his meticulously painted works gradually came, and his reputation grew. What's more, Hough had more time to go on road trips, photographing birds, animals and bush scenes as references for his paintings.

Initially, Hough took his family, but he sorely tested their patience.

"We would see nothing, and then the next thing the brakes would go on for him to take a photo of a post or something," wife Leonie recalls. "He sees things that mere mortals don't see!"

Hough has continued travelling into the country, driving, walking and kayaking into remote areas, sometimes waiting for up to half a day to photograph a bird.

"After two or three months of being in the studio, working flat out on your own work, I absolutely crave getting out in the bush, get out of the confinement of the studio, get the truck wound up and the camera gear out," Hough says.

The artist has also regularly headed to zoos and reserves, including Aussie Ark's sanctuary in Barrington Tops, where Tasmanian devils and hundreds of other threatened native species are given a haven.

"I think he likes sitting up there in the silence, actually, and the outcome is spectacular," Aussie Ark's Tim Faulkner says.

"He really immerses himself in it, and he really captures that in his art."

Hough did a painting of Tasmanian devils and donated it to Aussie Ark to auction at a fund-raising dinner. Faulkner loved both the artist's gesture and the painting, so much so he bought it.

"Tassie devils are really hard for artists to capture," Faulkner says, explaining they have been often portrayed looking like dogs, foxes and cats.

"But he really captured the devil, the real side of the devil."

Attending the dinner was the editor-in-chief of Australian Geographic, Chrissie Goldrick.

"I saw his painting, I saw his name, I looked him up on Instagram and started following him," Goldrick recalls.

Wildlife art has featured prominently in Australian Geographic calendars. So when the 2020 edition was being considered, Goldrick decided "a whole calendar of James Hough [works] would be great, so I contacted him and said, 'How about it?'."

"When the phone conversation with her was over, I just sat here a bit stunned for a while, I think," says James Hough. "It's exposure that I could never buy. I could never afford to market myself the way the calendar will do."

Not that he is doing it for money.

Chrissie Goldrick says when she asked Hough about his fee for reproducing the images, he said, "I don't want to be paid", instead requesting that the money be used for wildlife preservation. Two dollars from each calendar sold will be going to Aussie Ark.

The calendar features 13 Hough images, comprising mostly "feathers", but it also includes the Tasmanian devils painting and, as Goldrick explains, "we've got the most adorable fur on the cover".

Hough is thrilled, explaining the koala on the cover is a local: "That's from our own Blackbutt Reserve. I go there a lot, it's such a fantastic little reserve, so well run, and you get to see birds you don't see usually in captivity, like the scarlet honeyeater, all sorts of finches, forest kingfishers.

"That's why I was so excited about it; it's a local subject, a local artist."

Goldrick believes Hough's art is more than pleasing to the eye.

"People like James are important in making people aware of what's going on in our natural environment," she says. "These things are really important in raising awareness, and that leads to raising responsibility and concerns, and that can lead to action."

Hough's art is grabbing attention and awards overseas. He is a member of an international organisation, Artists for Conservation. Last year his work won two medals, and his painting of green rosellas won "Best in Show", at the group's exhibition in Canada.

But James Hough is keeping his focus on this country, painting, and helping protect, Australian native species.

"I just want to keep on doing what I've always done," Hough says. "Just keep improving my work.

"And it's a great excuse to be in the bush."

James Hough and four other wildlife artists are giving painting demonstrations over the June long weekend at Morpeth Gallery.