Kerry Kitzelman

Artist & Writer

Kerry Kitzelman was born in Ipswich, Queensland on the 22nd February in 1954. “My passion for wildlife means it is often the subject of my art work. Conservation and biodiversity issues are problems that our society must address if we are to continue to have a reasonable quality of life on this planet. Appropriate and significant action is urgently required. In our clinical city and urban existence it is so easy to forget that there is another natural world beyond our town houses and backyards. Hopefully, designs and other art featuring Australian wildlife (particularly endangered species) will continue to remind us of that world’s existence and fragility. In this country, knowledge of Australian wildlife is essential for our children who often grow up knowing all about lions, tigers and other northern hemisphere species but very little about our own. Ask a child (or adult for that matter) what a quoll looks like and you will be met with a vacant stare. More recently people have become familiar with the plight of the bilby because of the popular children’s story book “The Easter Bilby” and the commercial distribution of chocolate bilbies at Easter time. But of the vast number of beautiful fascinating Australian fauna very little is known. Perhaps when a child sees them in a design on their clothing they might be prompted to ask the question “What’s that?” Hopefully there will be an adult astute and aware enough to be able to tell them."

Kerry has a keen interest in environmental and educational issues on the Gold Coast. He helped establish the first Gold Coast branch of the Australian Conservation Foundation, and was a foundation member of the Gold Coast Environment Council. He became interested in publishing after producing a series of educational booklets for Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. These full color productions were sold in Zoos throughout Australia and contained many of his illustrations. Kerry established, developed and promoted the Education Service at the Currumbin Sanctuary. It started in 1987 with approximately 2000 students and grew to over 20,000 by 1997. He designed the school programs, wrote, illustrated, edited and published several of the Sanctuary’s souvenir books and educational publications. He established the Sanctuary’s Wildlife Presentations 1992-1998 and overseed the staff responsible for the training and behavioral enrichment of several native species. The work provided insight into the personalities of many unusual native animals and provided lots of inspiration for sketches. 1993-1996 Currumbin Sanctuary hosted an annual Wildlife Artists’ Exhibition called Wild Art where Kerry was heavily involved in its inception and began painting seriously again focusing on wildlife. He later became Environment Manager at Couran Cove Island Resort where Kerry experienced wildlife in the wild where they should be (as opposed to captivity). Kerry is a free lance artist and teaches at Griffith University.