The Robert Bateman Award 2018

I was presented with the Robert Bateman Award for 2018 by the Canadian Wildlife Federation, at their AGM in Regina on 16 June. This was my acceptance speech, with the slides I showed to illustrate it:



This is a picture of me, this morning, sitting in my hotel room, planning what I would say this evening - I looked up about the Robert Bateman Award, and it seems to be about inspiring people toward nature conservation, through Art. So I thought about INSPIRATION.

When I was finishing High School, I chose my vocation - 

I wanted a lifetime of learning, exploring nature, and being a naturalist. 

I decided that I would look for a job - perhaps as an assistant or technician, and there might be opportunities to do biological illustration. 

The CV I sent to Herpetology at the National Museum in Ottawa was so full of art that it was forwarded to the design and display department, and I became a museum illustrator. Then I married University of Toronto biologist Fred Schueler, who was visiting Ottawa to measure frogs for his PhD thesis.

Throughout our 45 years together, Fred’s knowledge and passion have inspired and informed my art…. It’s an exciting and fulfilling life, but not a secure or easy one. 

Freelance life is not easy for those with no business sense, but we keep going.... driven by the imperative to respect, study, and conserve nature.

Just this afternoon I've been finishing drawings of roadkilled Bird feet for a book we're doing with Kari Gunson about identifying and locating hotspots of road mortality, so mitigation can be designed and applied to reduce the fragmentation of the landscape. 

Fred’s massive and constantly growing database, into which he documents everything we see, is a useful underpinning for this work. 

It’s a big step to be recognized nationally - to be, not only noticed, but recognized publicly - and I’m amazed and grateful that my art has reached out so far to inspire others.

I’m pleased that the Robert Bateman Award is about Inspiration. 

Real change for good in this world can not happen without inspiration. 

Bob Bateman has inspired me both personally and through his art, 

and each of us was powerfully influenced in our youth by the paintings of the Group of Seven. 

As an art student in Toronto I was fascinated by the original field sketches of Tom Thomson, 

and figured out on my own that he’d first painted his boards a single colour - an under painting - 

which allowed him to then do the painting quickly before the weather changed. 

Twinkling between the brush strokes, the contrasting colour of the underpainting conjures up space, light, and movement.... I have a whole presentation on that, for another time. 

I believe that onsite, plein air painting speaks loudest because it’s a real-time dialogue with the subject itself. 

The outdoors artist is immersed in time and place, and the work produced inspires the viewer in a way no studio landscape painting could. 

In-spire, to breathe-in. Fresh air. It’s there in the painting. 

 

I’ve often said that I’ve never really seen a thing until I’ve drawn or painted it. 

Drawing and painting is  my way of seeing, and I’m happy that I can share that seeing with others. 

It’s a privilege to have been allowed to take the time in my life to practice this skill, especially in my watercolour portraits of plants and animals - 

to spend hours and days patiently noticing detail after detail and applying them to paper - 

....until the result is an image that somehow shows more to the viewer than they could see from the physical subject itself.

Sometimes when I’m finished, the effect surprises me,and I say “I can’t believe that I did that!” 

Perhaps it’s because I’ve observed it in parts, giving my whole attention to each detail in turn, 

and then the finished painting draws together all of those observations in a way that can be seen at once. 

Another kind of inspiration happens in a very powerful way, a big way - 

with the drawing together of artists to work in one place, to share their experience of that place so that people will recognize its value. 

Back to my earlier comment about Real Change - it happens through Inspiration. 

Fred and I have written books illustrated with my on-site drawings and paintings, 

and these books have been instrumental in saving special places from destruction. 

It’s happened more than once, and we hope to keep on doing it. 

The old growth rainforest of the Carmanah Valley was saved by a group of artists and a book, published by Western Canada Wilderness Committee (Bateman was one of those artists). 

A few years later I was one of the artists in Killarney, invited by the publisher of Wildflower Magazine in the 1990s. 

And then I participated in the Friends of Wolf Lake art camp in 2014 and helped to publish the subsequent book. 

This is my 9th year as Resident Artist at an annual two-week bioblitz held by the New Brunswick Museum - every year, art becomes a more important element of BiotaNB. (They let me come to Regina to receive the award)

In recent years Fred and I have become involved with Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, 

doing surveys and paintings in their campaign to protect the Dumoine River watershed in Quebec, 

and now for the second year I’m helping them to organize an annual week-long artists retreat - 

and there will be a book showing the work of many artists in the wilderness of the Dumoine - 

also public exhibits and an art auction. It’s great to feel the ongoing momentum of the artists retreats and the publicity around them. 

It feels powerful - revolutionary - yet gentle and beautiful. 

This is the way of Inspiration.

As a last word, I want to encourage - inspire - you to not only recognize, but support this kind of art. Art through which Nature speaks.