Meet Gerry
I am an illustrator, printmaker and picture book maker.
Born and brought up in Glasgow,
I was a city boy who loved wildlife.
There were wildlife havens in the abandoned spaces between the housing schemes where I lived, full of lizards and grass snakes with foxes and kestrels hunting them. These spaces in cities are disappearing all over at a time when they are more important than ever.
One of my earliest memories from when I was tiny, I must have been about four, I went exploring on some waste ground with my older brother and sister and neighbouring kids, when I saw a huge black slug with an orange fringe around its foot. I had no idea what this was, was it a snake? It was so alien. I had never seen one before and it held a sort of gruesome fascination that sparked a lifelong love of wildlife.
I grew up hoping that one day I would go to Glasgow School of Art and in 1994 I graduated with a degree in Illustration. Then I studied Natural History Illustration at the Royal College of Art.
