His paintings, his brushes, his desk. Filmed by the Asian Turtle Program, who work with him.
Thirty years of forests, hides and field notebooks, alongside scientists and the national parks of Vietnam.
A field note
The páramo is a landscape I hope to see at least once in my life, but I haven’t yet. Its strange, high-altitude vegetation is unlike anything in the jungles I usually explore. In this painting, the Andean bear is almost an excuse: a way to imagine and enter the landscape.
Paramo Spectacle Bear · 80 × 60 cm · Acrylic on canvas
Originals from $200 to $3,680, framed and shipped insured from his studio in Ho Chi Minh City.
Vultures · Cambodia
At Siem Pang Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia, three species of vultures still gather, not for feeding but to interact with each other. I watched from a hide for hours. They circled, landed, strutted, but never touched the buffalo carcass below. Jonathan Eames thinks some might be juveniles, just showing off. The smaller birds in the scene added a bit of lightness, like guests arriving late to a party.
Swift · Zambia
Many of us could watch falling water for hours, especially here, where Victoria Falls pours endlessly into the gorge. I was sitting in Livingstone, watching from the Zimbabwe side, when I noticed the swifts flying above the spray. Later I learned what species they were. Their wings echo the curve of the waterfalls: a quiet harmony in all that noise.
The painter
He paints the species of Southeast Asia, and above all the endangered ones that conservation campaigns rarely mention. Self-taught, in the field since 1999.
For organisations
Murals, scientific illustration, travelling exhibitions and workshops. Commissioned by national parks, hospitals, hotels and the WWF.
Where I went, what I saw, what is on the easel. Nothing else, and one click to unsubscribe.
