SCIENTIS + ARTIST

All my life is about nature, and I love nature life. The natural world sustains my spirit.

The best of Oliver’s childhood was spent in the Welsh valleys on a smallholding of bees, sheep and under a raven sky in the mountains. He worked on the local farms, fished every river, climbed every recess of birch, alder, oak and heather. Life was finding nature amongst the streams and peaty bogs, often exploring with his younger brother Dom and friends. They bred butterflies and moths (and kittens) every year, played with fox cubs and gathered fungi and wild salads. Nature was their teacher and therapist during the impending doom of 1970’s.

London, and the follow of Tintin

London roped him to study at Camberwell, followed by Chelsea school of Art, until tragedy struck. He returned to formal education later to follow his love of the natural world studying Plant ecology and then Environmental Science MSc at University of London (Birkbeck) in 2004. Oliver loves the art of science. Living in Italy and France for several years, selling landscapes via Disneyland Paris construction allowed him to move to Peru. Following Tintin, from 1994, he lived in Peru for nearly 3 years, and years since, immersing himself wherever possible in cloudforest and Amazon rainforest (Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia’s Rio Tuichi), only immerging from the forest when expelled by two species of Leishmaniasis protozoa! Recovering he found orchids spoke to him as he followed their vibrations with watercolour paints – he found each species was a perfect evolved phenological world; he searched out their pollination and myriad fragrances, encountering both wonderful people and the darker side of Peru’s hidden Valley. In 1996 Oliver spent 6 months working as art director and cameraman for a 10-part Peruvian TV series and films (Candamo &: Journey Beyond Hell directed by Daniel Winitzky) then returning to Lima to bring protozoan flesh eaters under control with chemotherapy and some wonderful doctors. His coastal recovery led him to fall in love again, this time with the desert; its lomas fog-ecosystems, coastal marshes, dry forest and hidden quebradas west of the Andes, all seemed to call for help, and with little conservation and understanding he eventually set up Huarango Nature NGO linked to Kew.

Oliver won awards for environmental writing and an RHS Gold Medal for his Peruvian rainforest orchids.

Back in the UK in 1999, he started working as an illustrator of taxonomic line drawings of spirit collection specimens, and pioneering techniques largely for Genera Orchidacearum Volume 2 at the Herbarium of RBG Kew. This allowed him to time to identify herbarium collections from Peru. Today almost all his illustrations of Peruvian rainforest orchids and taxonomic orchid illustrations (including Australian terrestrial species) are held in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Library and Archives collection.

I have been staff (Latin America project officer) and an Honorary Research Associate at RBG Kew, for over 25 years.

His main focus is plant conservation and community restoration projects in Perú and Chile. He has and keep writing scientific papers and books on plant biodiversity, bioarcheology and agrobiodiversity in desert regions.

 Trustee of Rainforest Concern-UK and other British charities dedicated to biodiversity conservation; research associate at the RBG Edinburgh; founder and Director of the Peruvian NGO Huarango Nature and part of the board of Directors of Fundación Chilco (Chile).

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