Geoff Notkin — The Real "About Me"

As a little boy, I longed for the rare days when my mother allowed me to miss school, and travel instead with her to the Geological Museum or the Natural History Museum, in London. Clutching my sketch pad, I worked furiously to create likenesses of those wondrous things locked inside glass cases: meteorites, gemstones, fossils.

Naturally, therefore, a correlation grew in my mind between art and science. It was a happy association in which paleontology and illustration enjoyed equal shares of my attention and devotion. Those meticulously drawn plates in museum reference books were, to me, the perfect marriage of beauty and knowledge. But this Renaissance view was, unhappily, not applauded or understood by the abusive and intolerant English school where I was forced to waste much of my childhood The dreary headmaster insisted that nobody could possibly be interested in two disciplines at once. "It's unnatural! Choose one thing, boy, and be done with it!"

In 1980 I moved to the United States, where I stumbled across a fine institution that did have a heart — New York's School of Visual Arts. I earned my degree there in the 1980s, and created Stanegate Studios in 1988. Through the association of admirable friends and colleagues, I did, at last, find a way to combine my passion for art and science. I now work in television, as well as the arts and sciences, and continue to pursue an active program of field work, both for research purposes and to feed my desire to see the wild places.

An adored art teacher once told me that "good art teaches us something about ourselves." I'm still not sure that I understand exactly what she meant, but I'm working on it. In the meantime, I hope that my websites will at least teach you something about the things I find wonderful and amazing in the world, and that you will consider your time here to have been well spent. Thank you for visiting, and don't ever let anyone tell you that you can only do one thing with your life.