When Daniel Taylor places a paintbrush on a canvas, he's also putting his money where his mouth is.
Specializing in high realist acrylic paintings, the Anmore native has devoted the better part of the last two decades to painting critically endangered species and donating proceeds from the sale of his works to various conservation programs across the world.
Taylor's efforts have been focused on species native to Africa, and the 56-year-old can lay claim to being the first person to ever observe and, in turn, paint the Cross River Gorilla.
It's feats like that that have seen Taylor's works displayed in galleries and publications across the world, and garnered him international attention as one of the world's preeminent high realist painters.
"It takes us around the world and brings attention and focus to that animal or person," he said. "It's an extremely important passion because it means others become involved. You are literally saving and preserving lives."
Taylor is currently crafting works depicting the plights of both the South African Cape Parrot and a vulture that's native to Tanzania, and it's through the reproduction of those images in publications like Africa Geographic and Birding that more attention is focused on those species.
But perhaps his best-known work is his painting of the Cross River Gorilla, a primate found in Cameroon and Nigeria that is on the verge of extinction.
He travelled to Cameroon's Lebialem Highlands, located near the border of Nigeria, in 2009 to track and document the animal.
It was a trip that both changed and nearly ended his life, as he came across skeptical residents, armed poachers and a perilous mountain valley.
"You're thinking, 'Should I go or should I stay?' but, of course, you're there for the greater reason," Taylor recalled.
His foray into the Lebialem Highlands began with gaining permission from local chiefs and kings, who were in charge of deciding whether or not to let Taylor, his wife and their guide through their lands.
That discussion took place in a small hut, where a heated, three-hour debate ensued that resulted in the local hierarchy ultimately forbidding the trio access through their tribal lands.
"There was arguing and the discussion got very heated at times," Taylor recalled.
"At the end, they weren't aggressive towards us, but they were shaking their fingers in our faces trying to get explanations about why we really desperately needed to get into that area and save these gorillas, because that's their livelihood."
The two biggest sticking points for the chiefs were that they rely on the gorillas for food and that they weren't being offered any immediate compensation for allowing the foreigners to pass through.
What Taylor had offered as compensation was a means to begin domesticating other animals -- deer, porcupine -- so the villagers wouldn't have to keep turning to the endangered gorillas for food.
Faced with having no access to those lands, the trio set off on an alternative route that saw them traverse down a seven-kilometre rock face and into the valley that the Cross River Gorillas call home.
"You're almost falling the whole way down. With one slip, it's goodbye. Once you fall down there, no one is coming to get you," he said.
Along the way they had another run-in, this time with poachers armed with machetes who had freshly killed monkeys in tow.
Not realizing the point of Taylor's trip, the poachers also turned hostile.
"It was really a super-tense atmosphere -- you're out in places where, if something happens to you, no one's going to know," he said.
"The first impression is that poachers are bad, bad people, but they're not. They're trying to survive. Many of them have great families. They have 40 or 50 kids with four and five wives."
Though Taylor makes a habit of going to great lengths to study and document his subjects, the fact that he is entirely self-taught is equally impressive.
While he's been painting for more than 40 years, he's never taken a class, nor received any formal training or instruction.
"It comes fairly easy to me because I've been doing it since I was just a wee, wee lad. There's no education that way and it's not a vocation I took on," he said. "It's just a personal thing."
That personal thing has led to Taylor painting portraitures for notable U.S. and Canadian politicians and Hollywood stars, while some of his works are displayed at the JFK Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
He's also earned the distinct designation of being named one of the United Nations Environment Programme's Artists of Critically Endangered Species.
"It doesn't matter where I go or what I do; it's what the art is bringing to the world," he said. "The attention that it draws from magazines, articles or televisions is more important."
For more information on Taylor's work, see www.wildartafrica.org
