together, and finally when I left, he rubbed his face on my face, took his necklace off his neck and put it around my neck and he said, “Now we are brothers.” That moved me quite a lot. Probably the most useful thing I have done, in practical terms, is to raise the money for two schools to be built in the Honduran rainforest, and to continue to support them financially. My proudest achievement is to have one of them named Escuela y Cliniqua Tony Foster. The estab- lishment of The Foster Art and Wilderness Foundation and The Foster Museum is certainly something in which I am extremely proud, but it is Jane’s achievement. I simply created the contents. Things happen if you put yourself out in the world, and because you’re an artist, you’re no threat to anybody. No matter what tribe they’re from, no matter what language they speak, or no matter who they are, if they come across you sitting quietly, working, they’re intrigued by it, and they’re generally welcoming, hospitable, and friendly. Richard Long, I suspect, would probably have been perfectly alright with the guerrillas. Though his work would be more difficult to explain than mine. At least with mine, they can see what’s going on, whereas with Long’s concep- tually based work, they might not quite understand why he was picking up rocks and taking them home. was when I was on a hike across Death Valley with three friends and one of the party passed out with heatstroke in the middle of nowhere. Then we all had to seriously consider the fact we might die. I can remember thinking at the time, well, I’ve made all my own decisions up to this point. I’ve followed my own inspiration or my own inclinations. I’m very fortunate, and this is a very beautiful place, and, I guess, it’s not a bad place to die. So even at that point, I didn’t regret what I’ve done or the reason I was there. What I regretted was I might not see my family and friends ever again. I thought about all those things, but I didn’t actually regret the path I’d taken. GB | You’ve done so many of these extraordinary expeditions. Are there any that you remember with particular affection or a sense of achievement? TF | Oh, lots of them, yes, yes. In terms of achievement, the Everest journeys were probably the greatest. I didn’t set out to become the only person who’d ever painted all three faces of Everest, somebody researched afterwards and found that nobody had done it before. So, that seemed like an achievement to me. Also the Grand Canyon was extraordinarily difficult to do and involved serious planning and a lot of logistics. I was lucky with my traveling companions, who were perfectly capable of helping to plan such a thing. But to twice spend periods of 30 days at the bottom of the Canyon just hiking and painting, and several months painting on both rims, well, those are pretty unique experiences. And similarly, working in the rainforest has its own peculiar difficulties, as well as great delights. The delights are that sitting there quietly painting, you see all sorts of things. Because my practice is very quiet and very still, I was just ignored by animals that some of the scientists who worked there for months had never seen. I’d go back to the research station in the evening and say, well, I saw a pair of giant tapirs — they walked into where I was painting and started browsing on the vegetation. One of the scientists said, “I’ve never seen a giant tapir!” So because of the way I work, I do have extraordinary things happen. Like becoming the brother of one of the few remaining hunter-gather- ers in Borneo. He welcomed me to his house, and we spent some time Tony Foster (far right) and companions sit outside the Escuela R. Mixta y Clinica Medica Tony Foster in Olanchito, Honduras, 2001. Foster visited Honduras in 2001 as part of his WaterMarks: Watercolour Diaries from Swamps to Icebergs Journey. While there, he was inspired to fund a school and clinic, and was honored and surprised when he learned its name. 17
