THE ADVENTURES AND LIFE OF AN ARTIST

A lifetime as an artist!

As I am totally self taught, creating and making have been my life since childhood. I was always painting and sewing and the only prizes I ever got at school was for art - nothing too academic!

Making one-of-a-kind clothes introduced me to working with different substrates and when I started to paint wildlife many years ago, I just carried the knowledge gained from working on silk, leather and other materials on to my artwork.

Through donating or selling my artwork to benefit the various wildlife conservation charities with which I have been involved,  I have travelled to many exotic and magical places which is a supreme privilege to see animals where they belong - in the wild, sadly before there is no wild left for them.

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India initially to see tigers in Ranthambore, Kanha and Corbett National Parks.  To see a magnificent tiger walking the path in front of me was an experience I will always treasure. There is considerable pressure on these big cats as they are poached for their body parts and skins.  There is more international awareness on this problem and severe sentencing on the Mr. Bigs of this dark world.

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Borneo to see the Red Buddha - orang utans who are 97% the same DNA as humans and are our cousins.  How can we see them disappear because of our greed and need for the palm oil which is now wiping out their habitat.  To look into their eyes and see another intelligent sentient being, is a memory I will never forget.

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Antarctica was breathtaking, sublime and ethereal.  The trip of a lifetime and if I never travel anywhere again,have fantastic memories of this magical continent.  It was a huge privilege to camp on Antarctica for one night and was one of the highlights of this adventure. I became involved in the rat eradication programme on South Georgia as these feral animals had decimated the indigenous bird population.  This was done in 3 phases and the birdlife is coming back now as there are no predators any more.  I paid for a hectare of land in perpetuity in the name of all my grandchildren, when I told them this was their Christmas present, the younger ones looked at me like I was bonkers!  I told one of the older grandsons who was doing his Duke of Edinburghs award that this could be his project to go to South Georgia and look for Grandma's piece of land - but Grandma had to come too!!

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When we visited Sri Lanka I lost my heart to a tiny orphan elephant in The Elephant Transit Home in Uda Walawe in the south of this beautiful island.  It was during the civil war and she had become separated from her herd.  She was a tiny, woolly mammoth and very frail.  She was being fed every couple of hours with a tube and formula milk.  They cry tears like humans and my heart was breaking to see her so sad, so as her sole 'foster mother, I adopted her and kept her in elephant formula milk for 4 years from the sale of my artwork before she was released back to the wild.  I was allowed to name her as her human 'Mummy' - she is called Florence (Nightingale) - what else could it be!  Whenever I return which is most years, many of the friends I have made there call me 'Elephant Mummy' and are almost tearful to know that I have to travel half across the world to see this baby elephant, but through her I have made some lovely friends.   However, when we last visited  in 2019 and found her in the Park, the dedicated  vet Dr. Vijitha Perera told me she may be pregnant!  There are some lovely wild boys out there so I may now be promoted to 'Elephant Grandma'.