Author Description

When Joy Adamson published some of her remarkable paintings of the people's of Kenya in 1967, few of the millions of readers of her books about the lioness, Elsa, had been previously aware of her talent as an artist. Even then the the full range of her achievements as a watercolourist was not recognised. But now she has been persuaded to allow a selection of her many other paintings to be reproduced in this book and to tell the story of how she came to make them. Her earliest pictures in Africa were of the unique indigenous flora and, although she began painting them as a recreation, she later agreed to illustrate important books on the garden flowers of Kenya, for which she was awarded the Grenfell gold medal of the Royal Horticultural Society. Following these beginnings, Joy Adamson turned her attention to the rich variety of other natural life in Kenya - the brilliant and shimmering coral fish which she sketched on the reef before their colours faded, some extraordinary chameleons and insects and a few of the beautiful birds. Later she embarked on the series of paintings depicting the tribesmen of Kenya, most of which now hang in State House, Nairobi, and Kenya's National Museum.Finally, her marriage to George Adamson brought her into almost daily contact with wild animals, and the second half of this book reproduces in colour and mono-chrome her lively sketches, not merely of the lions and cheetahs with which she is naturally associated, but hydras and impala, leopards and a buffalo calf, zebras, oryx and two baby elephants.This remarkable collections of pictures testifies once more of Joy Adamson's many gifts and to the breadth and intensity of her exceptional and rewarding interest in the natural life of Africa.