Bijal P. Trivedi
National Geographic Today
August 6, 2003
Article taken from National Geographic website

Like all great painters of nature, Olly Williams and Suzi Winstanley work best from life.

Olly & Suzi, as they are known professionally, are London-based artist-explorers who have portrayed wild dogs and lions in Tanzania, killer whales in Norway, polar bears and Arctic foxes in Siberia, tarantulas in Venezuela, orangutans in Borneo, and many others.

Since 1995 Williams and Winstanley have gone on more than 25 expeditions together. Usually they link up with wildlife experts in the field to get as close as possible to the action.

The artists collaborate with one another and, ideally, with their subjects. They induce wild creatures to interact with their canvases.

Bites, footprints, rips, and slithers are "proof of where we are, and proof of animals, landscapes, and indigenous tribes that are here now, but might not be around for much longer," Williams says.

Williams and Winstanley use related natural materials—ochre, mud, berries and dung—to heighten the sense of immediacy and primal contact in their encounters.

On a 1997 expedition among the white sharks off Cape Town, South Africa, the artists encouraged a shark to "autograph" a portrait by coating a painting with chum—fish parts and blood. The shark bit—again and again.

Williams' brother Greg documents the expeditions. His huge blowup photograph of the shark encounter hung over the entrance of the Natural History Museum in London during their exhibit last year, "Olly & Suzi—Untamed."

The new book "Olly & Suzi: Arctic, Desert, Ocean, Jungle" collects their work and writings.

Between Two Art Camps

"Their work is pretty unusual," says Steve Baker, a professor of contemporary visual culture at University of Central Lancashire in Preston, United Kingdom. "They fall between two art camps: one that produces realistic depictions of the natural world and the other that is more avant-garde."

"Olly and Suzi are closer to the avant-garde, but their work wants to make clear statements about the natural world, and the importance of endangered species and predators."

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.