Christian Gronau

Christian Gronau likes “all animals and certain people”. He painted the HABITAT cards in the peace and quiet of the handmade wooden house where he lives in the backwoods of Canada.
After studying geology Christian left Germany for less-travelled parts of the world. He and Aileen Douglas, who had left her native Scotland for similar reasons, found themselves a home halfway between saltwater tides and a beaver pond on a small island off the coast of British Columbia.
Twenty years living in nature´s mainstream has intensified their sensitivity towards the myriad of other-than-human forms of life, a sensitivity little known by the majority of the human denizens of today´s mechanised, industrialised world.

The HABITAT cards are a natural expression of their concerns about human responsibility. The photographs for the RACCOON cards were taken within Christian and Aileen´s immediate environment, where birds and animals can be observed every day in action and interaction – without fear of their human co-habitants.