I have yet to meet a first grader who doesn't love animals and art. I've worked with a lot of students to come to this conclusion. This past year has taught me how important creative expression is to our youth, and how creative time is dwindling for them. So many elementary schools in the U.S. don't have art rooms, let alone art teachers. Some teachers are able to incorporate art into their curriculum, but it sounds like it's getting harder and harder to do that, while adhering to strict state-wide standardized tests.

Mauritius may be just a small island in the Indian Ocean and the former home of the Dodo, but it still has an amazing array of endemic species, most of them unfortunately endangered. Like in most isolated places, Mauritian plants and animals have evolved in such a way that they have become dependant on one another.

This is the story of a very rare songbird and an even rarer plant.

The Olive white-eye (Zosterops chloronothos) is a member of the large family of Zosteropidae, small passerines native to tropical islands of the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific.

Around 70km north of Hanoi, Vietnam, a beautiful Asiatic moonbear stretches to his full height and climbs up onto a high platform to examine a fresh bunch of wild grasses, leaves and branches.

But until January last year, this bear had spent years in a dark cramped cargo container on an illegal bile farm in the south of the country undergoing the unending torture of regular bile extraction through an open wound on his abdomen.

A dear friend recently asked me the question, "Why do you paint animals?" Although we drifted on to other topics before a response could be articulated, I think of this question, often, as I create my artwork.