ART: JOHN DYER constructed, and they would slide open the doors to my private rainforest with 20,000 plants! Apart from 4 or five gardeners, it was only myself in there, and it was heaven. That led to working in the biomes, and it was a total joy - finally an art studio that was real rainforest - butterflies, tree frogs and all! You’ve held some pretty impressive artist in residence positions. Can you tell us a bit more about that? I have been very lucky during my career, but I created the opportunities myself by following the breadcrumbs from my original adventure in the Amazon in 1989 to today. One residency seemed to naturally follow the next - not through invitation, but through reaching out to an organisation or individual with a proposal. Painting at Eden sparked an interest in gardens - so I asked Alan Titchmarsh if I could visit him and paint - he said yes! Then I thought what fun it would be to spend a week with rock star come gardener Kim Wilde, and she said yes too! That led to an exhibition at the Eden project of new paintings from Italy and a set of signed prints of Alan’s garden (signed by Alan and myself), and a live talk with Alan and myself to 500 people at the Eden project. It put me on the radar of the leading plant genetics group CGIAR, and I suddenly found myself in Costa Rica painting bananas! One thing led to another and invitations to the Philippines to paint the rice harvest for the United Nations year of Rice and then to Peru to paint the potato harvest for the United Nations Year of the potato. Residence after residency kept coming. They have all been enormous fun. Everyone has had a focus on biodiversity and the environment, even the Australian residency for Banrock Station wine, where I painted the rejuvenated wetlands and wildlife and got served chilled rose wine whilst painting in the outback! What have been some of your greatest career highlights to date? One of my favourite residencies has
been back at the Eden Project in 2015. I put together a project with Robin Hanbury-Tenison and Survival International for me to spend ten days with an Amazon Indian, Nixiwaka Yawanawá, in the rainforest biome. It was extraordinary. Nixiwaka had never painted before, and I had never heard of or experienced the Yawanawá’ tribe’s spirituality and deep connection to the rainforest. We taught each other and created a new genre of art - Amazon art. I believed this is a world first, and the paintings that Nixiwaka and myself did are a unique and first insight into the tribal culture and understanding of the rainforest. And the biggest challenges? Painting in rainforest condition in very remote parts of the world is deeply challenging. My first two ‘Last Chance to Paint’ expeditions (https://www.lastchancetopaint. com) in 2019 took me to the edge of what I am emotionally and physically capable of. I repeated the residency with Nixiwaka Yawanawá in June 2019. This time, we did it embedded with his tribe in a very remote corner of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest near Peru. Just the final part of the journey to get there is an 8-hour motorised canoe ride along treacherous rivers filled with fallen trees and wildlife. It’s not for the fainthearted. Working within the complex dynamics and structure of the tribe, with the chief and shaman, was complicated and shone even more light on the fantastic relationship these people have with the rainforest. In September of the same year, I spent some time in Borneo, deep in the rainforest with wild orangutans. It was the most wonderful experience, but there were so much smoke and ash falling from the sky as the rainforest burnt all around me that it was hard to breathe, and the sun was obliterated. It was physically and emotionally hard, but it has re-energised me to try to do my bit to stop the devastation by educating children using art to engage them in the issues. I was literally on the front line of climate change, and it is shocking—a real war zone.
You are an earth day artist. Why is this important to you? Being an artist for the earth with earthday.org is a privilege, and I was delighted when the organisation asked me to be one of their artists in this role. It’s important for me as every organisation I work alongside helps me gain a larger audience and engage people optimistically and positively in making changes in their lives to protect the planet. Art is an amazing way to do this and the reach of an organisation like Earth Day is huge. You work a lot on educating the youth of today. Why is this essential? My paintings are studied in schools around the world, but in the UK, I am often the subject of school work from the primary level all the way up to a degree thesis! I get requests from schools studying my paintings of Cornwall, but for me, if they can fulfil the contemporary artist part of the curriculum with my environmental paintings, that achieves far more. If we can capture young minds early and give them personal reasons to protect the environment, they might take steps to do that. It comes down to one word - love. If we can’t instil a love for the environment, how can we expect children to be careful with it? We have to move beyond the science of the rainforest and talk about it on a personal level. I aim to give children that personal connection, a love for the environment by getting them to invest their own time in making a painting and learning what and who the painting is about. Once you have met the Yawanawá tribe with me and seen the baby orangutans and painted them, I believe it will create that love, and then we can start real change at a powerful individual level. We really don’t have long to get this right now, and the next decade with set the future, but the future isn’t written yet - well, not entirely anyway, so there is hope. Let’s paint a brighter picture for us all. >>
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