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| I am the flame. © Angela Cutler 2013 |
I have always had a connection with nature. As a kid I would be fascinated by whatever I could find in my garden - what we as adults find ordinary, was extraordinary to me then. I even remember as a toddler sitting watching ants industriously scurry by, I'd watch spiders spin webs and wrap up flies, I'd try and find caterpillars, so that I could put them in a jam jar and watch them turn into hard, crusty crysalis's; then transform into butterflies...mostly 'cabbage whites' as I recall. I was just amazed by the enormous variety of life and lifeforms, of colour, of everything living. I have two older brothers who brought home a plethora of unusual pets - grass snakes, toads, lizards, stick insects. As I grew older, I'd watch and feed the garden birds and then later, we did have some more usual pets - a goldfish from a fair, a mouse saved from a zoological supplies shop, gerbils and fancy rats; we never had a dog or cat. I would also watch all the David Attenborough nature programmes on TV, read natural history books too and my favorite place to visit was the zoo - I got to be pretty knowledgeable about the flora and fauna around me. Much later, I almost read Ecology at University rather than Art. Almost.
