'My association with the Ngorongoro and the Crater highlands in Tanzania has been a long one! It is a place redolent with memories of my childhood in East Africa. Ngorongoro has always been a place to experience the wilderness with great intensity, because of its uniqueness and beauty, as well as concentration of game within the crater walls. The wide open vistas of the crater floor make it possible to often see lions hunting even at midday, something so difficult to see in many other environments as they generally hunt at night, or the bush is too thick for clear views, such as in many parts of Botswana. Another part of the Ngorongoro magic is of course the never to be forgotten magnificently tusked elephants, found in the Lerai forest, who are said to have never left the vicinity of the crater. My first visit was at age 2 in 1954. In later years, when my parents split up, my mother moved to Kenya where I went to school in Mombasa. School holidays in the early 60s were spent camping in the bush, and we made many visits to Ngorongoro. Much has changed in the past 50 years. A tar road now reaches almost to the top, and instead of being a remote destination, this spectacular place has become a bit of a circus. But that’s all right - Ngorongoro is so unique you can forgive it anything! My last visit was in 2007 when my wife, Clarissa, and I spent a few days on the rim. On one of those bitter cold late afternoons a group of elephant bulls browsed close to where we were camped. The evening light was just as I like it - red and low. It was a scene that had to be painted and so I made some watercolour sketches. Best of all, everybody else was down in the crater, 3 kilometers below and beyond, so we had them all to ourselves!.'

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This is one painting of 200+ African, wildlife, Swahili Coast, bird and African landscape works featured in the archive section of this website.