Artwork Description:

Title: Paguroidea

These hermit crabs were painted from specimens of the Life Collections at The University of Oxford Museum of Natural History. The crabs I drew didn’t actually have their shells intact, so I painted each shell from the collections to give each them a new home.

As hermit crabs grow, they require larger shells. Since suitable intact shells are sometimes a limited resource, competition often occurs between hermit crabs. The availability of empty shells at any given place depends on the relative abundance of gastropods and hermit crabs, matched for size.

Watercolour on paper

Artist Bio:

I am a Derbyshire-based, artist/illustrator and art tutor.

I have a degree in textile design, and a masters from Central St Martins in Communication Design/Illustration.

My inspirations include natural history, explorers and naturalists, Hitchcock films, kitchen sink dramas, ghosts & haunted houses  and Agatha Christie and Daphne du Maurier novels.

I am currently working on a series of Shackleton illustrations which evoke the foreboding atmosphere and historic accounts of the Trans-Antarctic Expedition, as well as developing an idea for a graphic novel inspired by Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.