Mieke Roth

Who is that crazy woman that likes cutting into beasts, you may wonder? I live in the Netherlands with my three-year old son. I was one of those kids who ran around with a butterfly net and a jar. I started drawing the moment I could hold a pencil. My favorite subjects were animals. In my teens I was the apprentice of a gifted artist. He taught me the technical skills I needed to become an artist too. Since being an artist seemed a sure way to starve, or so my parents thought, I went to Wageningen university and graduated as an animal scientist. The following years I went astray. I worked in IT, for a bank: ABN AMRO. It took me eight years to return to my original calling: being an illustrator of animals. And because I was by then an animal scientist and IT specialist, I could do all sorts of sciency things and talk to scientists and managers alike. So I became a scientific illustrator.

And I didn't starve.

But.

Over the past nine years I have mostly illustrated technical stuff. Things. Machines. Innovations. With the Nile Crocodile project I intend to get back to animals seriously. And to bring scientific illustration to a new level.