WILDINKWELL.COM

A traveler with a passion for art.

Occasionally I think we all find that we do something or go someplace that makes a great impression, impacting our lives and the way we think about things. As a wildlife illustrator I enjoy travelling, not only to see a new place and learn about different cultures, but to gather reference material for my work through sketching or photography.

I made many journeys in 2009 to Alaska, Colorado, Arizona, but two were to the extremes of the planet and those are probably the most intriguing and different.

In the Southern hemisphere I traveled to South Georgia, which required a three day voyage through the rough, gray seas of the Southern Atlantic. South Georgia is one of the sub-Antarctic islands off the southern tip of Argentina, home to a wealth of wildlife, king penguins, elephant seals, wandering albatross and leopard seals.

The other journey, to the Russian Far East, was equally remote and took me to the coast of Siberia and on to Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean. A voyage that sailed the top of the world, where you found yourself wading ashore from the zodiac’s to places so isolated and untraveled that you had the feeling you had stepped back a thousand years as you walked beside gray whale bones encrusted with lichen or found ancient human skulls fragile and green with moss.

Both of these trips were incredible to experience. In South Georgia I sat in complete contentment on the beaches sketching and taking photographs of the king penguins that surrounded me completely unconcerned by my presence; I was just another living thing in a landscape filled with life. The Russian trip was very different, in both the wildlife’s attitude to my presence and because of the cultural influences that have shaped this region making the journey unforgettable.