About me
I was born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1971. My grandmother was the world-renowned wildlife artist, Joan Jocelyn, and I still remember her studio in Victoria Falls being littered with canvases, paintbrushes, and filled with the tantalizing smells of turpentine and linseed oil.
I am self-taught and only began my professional art career in 2006 at the same time I moved to Nottingham Road in South Africa's KwaZulu Natal. In that time, my subject matter has changed a great deal as have my methods and techniques. Beginning with equine art and figurative art and using both oils and pastels, I became fascinated with painting wildlife and this subject is now my focus. My use of pastels gave way to using oils more and more and they are now my preferred medium in all my work.
I cannot help but get involved with my subjects and, as a result, I have developed an absolute passion for the African bush and the wildlife that we are so honoured to be able to still see in the wild, but that future generations may not. Understanding that their future is so very precarious came as a shock to me, as growing up in Zimbabwe, I had tended to take their presence for granted. In my small way, I hope that my work will excite people again about African wildlife and bring the predicament of these incredible species to the attention of us all before it is too late. The tragedy that our children may only being able to see a lion or a leopard in captivity, and even that being a rare sight, is a very real possibility.
My trips to wildlife parks in Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa in order to collect sketches, and the photographs my partner, a wildlife photographer, takes, are a true high point in my life. This is when I get to just be in the bush and with the animals. It feeds my soul and I come back inspired again to do better justice to their power, beauty and fragility through my paintings.