'No matter whether it’s a car accident or you are nailed by an outside set of waves on a big day and loose your surf board - the last sixty years of my life have taught me that when you are ambushed by fate, that when things go wrong, they go wrong incredibly rapidly. Before you know what is happening your car is skidding out of control, or you are being swept out to sea, or you are running for your life from a lion. This is how nature works all the time and every wild animal probably has a heart stopping moment every night. No matter how many times you see a lion pulling down an animal, the surprise is how quickly it all happened and how fleeting and unjust life is for the unwary. One minute you are alive and then in the next you are fighting to survive. Instinct is supposed to save you, and you can see this in the wild when buffalo turn to face the lion and often survive. But facing down a lion is a very tough call when every fibre in one’s body screams run! And on such an occasion - I regret to say that I did do just that - I ran. This was the wrong thing for me to do but without thinking I ran! This ignominious event occurred in Botswana in 1980 at Kwikampa Pan in the Chobe district. It was the rainy season and I had got out of my vehicle to wade through a very deep pool that blocked the track ahead. I did this to see if I could safely drive through it. By the time I reached the other side of the pool I was twenty or thirty yards from the vehicle and at that moment a lioness burst from the bushes about 50 yards in front of me. One fleeting glimpse of the very angry lioness charging towards me was enough. In a second I had turned and was running through the water very aware of the blood freezing grunts of the lioness. Panicked, I leapt into a tiny sapling and struggled to the top just in time to see the lioness come up to the base of the tree. If the lioness had been in earnest she could easily have pulled me down. But she didn't! Instead she stopped looked up at me and then ran off. I nearly had a heart attack but I had learned my lesson. What was really burned into my psyche was the grunting sound the lioness had made as she charged. Its effect was almost paralyzing, and deafening as well. So now when I paint such scenes I fully understand what it is like to be the quarry when a lion attacks. That’s why my paintings nearly always show the lion with it’s mouth open - as in this painting set in Botswana. I know exactly how the buffalo in the painting are feeling!'

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