This piece was created in December 2020, after the second national lockdown had eased and local restrictions, in the form of tiers, were back in place. Looking back through old photographs on my phone is always a mood boost. As the cold weekends of winter rolled in, a photo appeared in the scroll from Safari Zoo, located in Dalton-in-Furness, Cumbria, from a visit in the summer of 2019. At the zoo, the ring-tail lemur troops, as well as ruff lemurs, are free-roaming within one part of the Zoo meaning that as people walk through the lemurs are roaming around the tree canopies too.
Zoos were quite hard hit in the lockdowns as they were forced to close and there was initially no government support for the overheads of running the zoo. It’s important to remember that a zoo has the purpose of conservation and providing safe spaces and enclosures for animals who live in captivity. Without visitors, the zoos around the UK lost a large amount of income. Safari Zoo reported that it costs around £1000 a month to feed the carnivore section alone seeing the animals eating 65kg of meat a day!
“The Save Our Zoo campaign was launched on one of the darkest days in our history.“
Chester Zoo, Save Our Zoo Campaign
Chester Zoo – the largest zoological society in the UK, also campaigned for support from the government stating that its loss of income could mean that its doors would have to close for good. Not something that anyone would ever think they would see. With continued restrictions from the pandemic and loss of income from visitors, Chester Zoo reported a financial gap of £5 million.
So, why choose to create the ring-tail lemur in chalk pastel media? As mentioned above, looking back through photos and remembering the character that the ring-tail lemurs have, wanting to create this piece made sense. Further, the colours and difficulty of the creation didn’t appear to be too advanced either.
It’s not the best piece that has been created but the blending of the chalk pastels and detail on the face and eyes, as well as the distinct fence railing the ring-tail lemur is sat on, the piece was a good one to start with in terms of learning to have the focus of pieces being animals.
This blog post is available in audio as a podcast and can be found here: Roaming Lemur audio
Artwork in Progress 