It’s one thing to tell someone about the wildlife and endangered species here in Australia, it’s another thing to show them instead. That’s exactly what artist, Samantha Beau, has done with her street art, illustrating endangered Australian wildlife around the Gold Coast.
“Wildlife has always been a thing in my family and sometimes you’ve got to battle for underdogs,” says Sam. “Animals can’t protect themselves if their environment has changed due to our impact, and I felt hugely responsible for that.”
This isn’t her first wildlife-inspired artwork. As well as other art pieces surrounding the wildlife and environment in Australia, Samantha has created similar chalk art pieces for the past four years. She says that she uses art to lure people with beauty into something with a far deeper and pressing message.
She explains, “The whole idea, for me, is to use art as a non-confrontational means to get the average person thinking about animals that might be suffering, without putting them off.”
As for who her target audience is, it’s mainly children. Samantha tells us that a great way to get parents and adults involved and engaged, is to cater to the younger audience who is more likely to involve the older age group. Eye catching artwork achieves this perfectly.
“The kids go ’aw mum!’ and they start the conversation in the family, and then the parents have to look stuff up, and if the parents don’t then the kids will, and they’ll present it to the parents. So, my audience is the kids and it’s vertical education,” says Samantha.
Not only is this a clever and effective way of spreading awareness, it looks great too!
Samantha has more things in store for us, with a pitch ready to present to the Gold Coast City Council to hopefully enable her to have more of her chalk art around the Gold Coast, and engage a larger audience in her powerful message. With aspirations to take her street art to Europe, we can see that we have much to look forward to from Samantha Beau.
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You can view Samantha's work on her fb.com/samanthabeauartist here, as well as her website samanthabeau.com.