A person can change your life without thinking
much about it.
I was probably about 5 years old when my dad left me with a secretary while he went in to the manager’s office at International Harvester (we went there often) in Nairobi, Kenya. She, being busy, gave me a pen and paper and quickly showed me how to draw stick people. Soon I was drawing stick animals, stick birds, stick insects (yeah, I know), stick tractors, stick cars & stick houses on every available surface.
Unlike most children, I haven’t stopped.
My course at the Dun Laoghaire College of Art & Design, outside Dublin, Ireland, was titled Design for Visual Communication. That pretty much sums it up for me:
if design doesn’t speak to you – as a client / customer / passing onlooker / human being –
then it isn’t working.
And I love creative problem solving.
I was born in Kenya and grew up on a farm on the foothills of Kilimanjaro (very Karen Blixen). So from an early age I was immersed in the African bush and its wildlife. Later I travelled as much as I could and have also lived, studied and worked in Ireland and South Africa – where I am now based in the lovely town of Knysna. Wildlife remains a passion.