Williams and Winstanley have collaborated almost from the moment they met in 1987 at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Williams began doodling on Suzi Winstanley's notebook.
"It was really quite annoying in the beginning," Winstanley says. But now the pair are so attuned that their hands work together on their canvases. (The artists are not romantically involved.)
Their interest in wildlife evolved during a yearlong scholarship to study print making at Syracuse University in New York, where they also learned about Native American folklore in which "animals were regarded as brothers," Williams says. "It's a theme that runs through the cultures of many indigenous peoples."
Williams and Winstanley appreciate the perspective of scientists in the field—and vice versa.
"[When I first met them I thought] interesting, but who are these people," says Tony Fitzjohn, field director of the George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trusts, based at the Mkomazi Game Reserve in northern Tanzania.
"This later gave way to a respect for their need to get more involved in the animal world than just painting from slides...it's as if they are putting bits of themselves, as well as the animals onto the paper," says Fitzjohn who has known Olly & Suzi for more than ten years and collaborated with them during their lion and wild dog studies.
Collaborating with Creatures
In early 2000 Olly & Suzi helped Venezuelan biologist Jesús Rivas, an adjunct professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and field correspondent for National Geographic Television, capture an anaconda.
"It was this bloody great big thing slipping around in the mud, it was absolutely terrifying," Williams says.
The anaconda was sedated and transported to the research station where Rivas and his colleagues gave it a physical, and determined its age and sex.
After the exam Olly & Suzi applied nontoxic water-based paints to the snake and placed it on a canvas.
"It slid around making prints of its belly, lay still allowing us to trace the outline of its body, then we washed of the paint and released it back where we found it," Winstanley says. "No harm to the animal."
The artists have become used to working fast to capture the moment. In the wilderness, encounters are fleeting. In 1998, Williams and Winstanley spent six weeks on Canada's Ellesmere Island—just a few hundred miles from the North Pole—and saw white wolves only on their first night.
"We have these wonderful frantic intense moments that happen when the animals appear," Winstanley says. "It's an exciting way to work."
"Their stories of their adventures tell it all. No great bragging, [but] lots of humor, regardless of the dangers. [They do] whatever it takes to get that picture—that feeling—up front and personal… their patience reflects that of wildlife cinematographers," says Fitzjohn.
The challenges continue. Next year Williams and Winstanley plan to travel to Antarctica, where they will dive under the ice to paint leopard seals attacking penguins.
National Geographic Today, 7 p.m. ET/PT in the United States, is a daily news journal available only on the National Geographic Channel. Click here to learn more about it.
Have a high-speed connection? Watch National Geographic Today in streaming video.
|
SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES
|
