Hello and welcome to the Wildlife Artist Blog. Here, I share my journey as I explore and learn more about the mysterious wild world we inhabit - via my eyes and via my paint brush. As an artist, I love to contemplate how something in the natural world can be brought to life on a flat piece of paper, and I constantly challenge and provoke myself to capture this wild energy and be captured by it. As a human living through a time when nature is struggling with our impact, I also love to spend time understanding the wild world around me, and considering how to live on this earth more lightly. Join me as I wend my way, both as an emerging artist and as an explorer of nature.
HEALTHY PLANET, HEALTHY HUMANS
I have spent the last thirty years working with people as a Transformative Wellbeing Coach, supporting the mental and physical health of individuals, groups and organisations by helping people to reconnect to their innate wisdom and wellbeing. During this time, I have seen over and over how human wellbeing is intrinsically tied to the wellbeing of our natural environments and our planet.
We all know this intuitively, don't we? We reach for more time in nature whenever our body - or soul - needs healing. But somehow it is the truly wild places that touch us most deeply.
It intrigues me how rapidly the human body and spirit will recover when we are given skilful and timely non-invasive support, and the space in which to naturally thrive. I have seen this over and over in individuals who are seeking better health.
It seems that the natural world is no different: just as we can regenerate, so can our environments.
We live in a time where we are seeing the negative impact of human intervention on so many of our ecosystems, but we are also living in a time when people are rallying nationwide, and planet-wide, to change the narrative.
In the past 8 years my own love of nature found a new form of expression when I began to study and paint UK wildlife. There is something about focussing in on the detail of wing, fur and whisker that has heightened my awareness of the creatures around me. It has brought to me a level of intimate connection and wonder that I have never fully felt before. It is as if, with each sketch and painting, I have been slowly opening my eyes to the beauty around me, but also seeing the harm we have caused as human beings. I have begun to wake up to the fact that we can do something when, together, we share our love of wild creatures and wild places, celebrate and honour what we see, and invoke a heartfelt response in others.
ECO ANXIETY?
It would be all too easy to think that we are too late: that the decline of diversity and wild spaces is inevitable, and no one person can really do anything.
But this is a time when numbers matter: the number of a particular species that still remains and the number of humans who are taking notice and planting themselves firmly on the side of conservation and care.
There are so many stories now of conservation efforts successfully pulling species back from the brink of extinction, and of denuded wild spaces being regenerated and rewilded.
I recently returned from a trip to the Cairngorms. For the past twenty years, myself and my husband have been regularly visiting Glen Feshie. We have seen management of the area change to the point where it is now gently transforming into a truly diverse ecosystem. The ancient pine forests are once more beginning to ‘walk’ their way back up the mountains.
ART THAT SUPPORTS CONSERVATION
In terms of my own work, I want my art to serve to remind us of the beauty of the creatures we live amongst, and to bring this beauty to homes and work spaces through my individaul pieces. However, I also want it to do something bigger.
At this time, I am beginning to find my way with this by donating a percentage of my proceeds to UK wildlife groups (inspired by the ‘One Percent for the Planet’ initiative), and reaching out to conservation organisations to discuss the possibility of collaborating in ways that can use my art to support their fund raising. If you have any ideas of other ways I can help please do get in touch let me know.
And if you have found ways in which celebrating, understanding more deeply, exploring and cherishing the wild has been impactful, then please do reach out and share this with me.
For now, thank you for being here, and for joining me on this journey.
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