My Personal Project - Kaye Amores

The goal for My Personal Project is to create a mini gallery of three painted art pieces, each one about a critically endangered species, all native to different countries across the globe. Relating to the Global Context, 'Globalisation and Sustainability', along with the species chosen, an object will be added on the painting that will represent the cause of each species’ endangerment, such as paper money to represent illegal wildlife trade.

These art pieces, that will look like a collage, will fulfil the purpose of my project; to raise awareness that these particular species are currently endangered as a result of poor human decision-making. This Project is very personal to me because I want to become a vet in the future, and I am an animal and nature-lover by nature. On the other hand, I am also very passionate for art and have joined an after-school art club in my primary school. However, this Project is very challenging for me as I have never learnt how to paint before, especially on a canvas as well as never painted animals in particular. To challenge myself even further, the merging of a painting and an object on a canvas causes even more uncertainty for the outcome.

So far, I have made two art pieces about the Black Rhino and the Hawksbill Turtle. The Black Rhino art piece took a little less than a month straight to finish as I spent 2.5 weeks on the animal itself. For the Black Rhino I used Namibia’s $20 bill, since the black rhino is native to Namibia, to create the grass and represent illegal wildlife trade. Due to the high demand of the rhino’s horn, resulting in poaching, the Black Rhino became critically Endangered. Unfortunately, this piece is not finished yet because I wasn’t satisfied with the outcome of the background and therefore decided to redo it now (as seen from the photo above). For my second piece; the Hawksbill Turtle, I used various colours of nets to recreate a coral reef and represent bycatch fishery (as seen from the photo on the left). One of the major causes for the Hawksbill turtle’s endangerment is bycatch fishery where they accidentally get caught in the large fishery nets and eventually drown. Because the turtle has so many details I actually spent 24.5 hours, spread out on three days, on the animal’s detailing itself, so overall, I took about two months to finish this entire piece.

For my third piece, I have planned to make it about the Amur Leopard. This species is another victim of Illegal Wildlife Trade where they are poached for their admired spotted fur, but in addition they are also killed because of conflict with humans. This conflict, however, is due to the species not having enough resources in the forests which is a result of logging and agriculture where their forests are cleared or deduced. To represent these causes for endangerment, I will be using fabric to represent how they are killed for ‘clothes’ as well as their conflict with humans. On the right you can see my practice painting of the leopard.