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One hundred years ago, in the last days of the great European explorers, nature had so radically diminished that it was a novelty: it is for this reason that African explorations captured the imagination of nineteenth-century man. To enter a truly natural world was exotic, beyond the experience of most mankind, who lived from birth to death in entirely man-made circumstances.
In the twentieth century the balance has shifted so far that for all practical purposes one may say that nature has disappeared. Wild plants are preserved in hothouses, wild animals in zoos and game parks: artificial settings created by man as a souvenir of the once-prevalent natural world. But an animal in a zoo or a game park does not live its natural life, any more than a man in a city lives a natural life.
Today we are surrounded by man and his creations. Man is inescapable, everywhere on the globe, and nature is a fantasy, a dream of the past, long gone.
Maurice Cavalle - French anthropologist
(from the paper entitled "The Death of Nature" published in 1955).
The quote above is relevant today more so than ever before! For this reason the animals I paint are taken almost exclusively drawn directly from wildlife photography books. Like many South Africans I have personally never experienced wildlife in natural environments and because of the popularity of eco-tourism African wildlife has become an exclusive recreational experience.
The world we inhabit has become more manipulated and market orientated and to me it seems that natural environments have become more of an exception than a rule. For this reason I have chosen to separate the subjects in some way from their natural environment making them more of a decorative element than a true representation of natural law. In some works the boldness of the stylization makes the animal almost an icon inhabiting a new urban environment.
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