ABOUT THE ARTIST

One day in September 1996 (I was 32) my family arranged with some of their friends to visit Paradise Wildlife Park in Broxbourne to “meet the cubs”, and they invited me along as well. I nearly didn’t manage to get up in time and had to bomb over to Broxbourne on my motorbike with minutes to spare. We were led into an area of the zoo and Simba (a six week old Lion cub) and Khan (an eight month old Tiger) were brought over to meet us. You had to be there to understand how it felt to be so close to these animals, it was a truly life-changing experience for me. Khan was just so beautiful and because he was 8 months old he wasn’t exactly a cub either. He was 6 foot long from nose to tail. His fur was soft and his tongue was like sandpaper. As I traced the black stripes across his face with my fingers his gaze looked straight through me. This was a creature from another world, it felt unbelievable that less than an hour ago I had preferred to stay in bed than be there. I was lucky.

I didn’t take my camera with me that morning, however my brother Robert did and once he had had the films developed I borrowed one of the photos of Khan and dug out my paint box. My first tiger portrait was pretty good, or at least my family and friends thought it was good.

Encouraged, I painted some more, borrowing tigers from David Shepherd and various web sites. Although I couldn’t sell these images because of copyright, I found they did make great gifts for young ladies :o). The gradual shift of my focus fully into construction as a means of employment was gently pushed away at this time and plans were drawn, just mentally, to paint tigers for a living.

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