Hello Slow Loris friends! Firstly, we’re two artists known as Badgers of Bohemia and we are absolutely delighted to be part of your Slow Loris outreach week. We’re oil painters & conservation artists, a collaborative duo are inspired by our inextricable link to all life. We specialise in trying capturing & connect the natural world and issues through art installations, murals, public spaces, interiors, surfaces & onto ‘things’, such as this cushion, which will feature in this years #SLOW2018 raffle, connecting conservation & art!
Connecting Art & Conservation
It has become more apparent and increasingly urgent to us that art can be a truly wonderful vessel for highlighting issues, opening dialogues about many facets facing modern society & in effect ‘turning on lights’. We’re inspired by the amazing evolutionary steps taken by nature, the beauty & forms, the magical diversity, the modes of communications we both come from a place of deep connection and appreciation to the sheer biodiversity & synergy of life on this planet and our connection within it. So, from this & of particular interest to us is bringing about awareness to conservation, highlighting ‘threatened’ & ‘keystone’ species as well as the protection of our worlds natural flora and fauna. With this as our ‘centre-point’ we do a great deal of research, interviews & focus our intentions on creating beautiful engaging pieces of art depicting the natural world we love, often with a deeper narrative & hidden elements.
Reducing the Divide between Us and Them
Our art often uses anthropomorphism to challenge the divide between humans and our animal counterparts. All animals (and we believe most plants) have personalities, characteristics and have as much reason to exist peacefully & happily on this beautiful planet as we. It is only relatively recently that we are starting to scratch the surface of complex modes communications used within nature. So for example in one of our paintings we have a Lemur playing a Sitar, in others, bejewelled primates showing them interacting, adorning themselves with human objects we hope to point out their curiosity, intelligence and similarity.
The Curiosity and Beauty of Animals
Our artwork attempts to capture the beauty in each species from some of the least known i.e. the sadly traded ancient Pangolins with their quirky little walk, innocence and stunning armour, through to once thought extinct animals such as the Coelacanth, or painting in a new manner some of the culturally misrepresented animals such as the magnificent shark who’ve been around for over 400mya but are under threat. We often hide meanings within our work, little narratives that touch upon problems some of these animals (and plants) are facing. Other paintings are whimsically happy showing dreamlike landscapes & colours. Through our artworks we wish to engage people from all walks of life, we’re all in this together by ‘turning on lights’ re-engagement, curiosity & positive awareness, combating some of these zoological ‘worn’ notions, with beauty & art, small changes can make giant things can happen.
All our creations are all hand painted by us both, which takes us many, many months of intensive work in our fairly small studio, which overlooks the sea, so gives us the opportunity to sea, hear & feel the elements! We’ve very recently had the privilege to produce artworks as part of a major commission from the world leading conservation organisation Chester Zoo. We created a series of Artworks called Transitions, this included, creating 3 enormous crowd stopping oil-painted murals. These cover a life size Rhino, Assam Elephant & Giraffe standing at over 5.5m tall. Each richly detailed & beautifully painted mural depicts part of the Transitions story. These along with other oil-painted creations, botanical & animal artworks were used to restyle the entrance, shop window, main entrance gates and build a sense of excitement & engagement to Chester Zoo and their Wild Worlds Festival. We used each animal to represent parts of the day Rhino (morning), Elephant (noon) & the Giraffe (evening). The metaphor of the ‘Transition’ of the changing of the day depicted how abundant life once was to how quickly we are losing our animals, insects & botanicals, which we found were themeslves disappearing every day, in some cases even before being scientifically classified. The artwork has been done in a subtle and beautiful way, with the final part of the painting depicting fireflies leading into a moonlit sky symbolising the species we have already lost, we hope the message was very poignant and we know that over 1+million people have seen it, so again thought-seeds we hope are sown for all ages.
So Why Paint A Slow Loris?
Amongst an array of animals some bejewelled, including a sloth with a shisha pipe we featured a Slow Loris on our design called ‘Bohemian Palms’. We’ll they were another lesser known species until they began facing particular ‘media’ problems! This ‘misguided-cute’ appeal increase a growing trend of keeping this beautiful animal as a pet. So, we feel by portraying their beauty we can educate, they’re ‘wild’ animals & not ‘cute’ pets. Of course it’s very difficult not to fall in love with their gentle faces and big watery eyes but if you do love them, watching them from a distance in their natural environment, work towards raising awareness & protecting their habitats so they can live their lives & we can enjoy observing them in their purest form.
We hope that our donation to the Slow Loris Raffle of one of our ‘Bohemian Palm cushions RRP £280 raises some much needed pennies. It is our sincere hope that through understanding, engagement and more people being aware of this magnificent nocturnal creature helps spread the messages of Slow Loris. The Slow Loris outreach week is a fantastic opportunity for us all to engage, share stories, raise awareness & work together to protect this most special of creatures, their habitats and improve their numbers in the wild places of the world.
We at Little Fireface Project give a HUGE thanks to Badgers of Bohemia for their generous donation, and all the outreach their positive use of slow lorises in their amazing artwork has resulted in! We hope to continue our journey into the conservation of many overlooked species with these amazing and passionate artists!
