ALI LIMENTANI ILLUSTRATION
I'm an Illustratior, an Animal Behaviourist, a Registered Veterinary Nurse and a Veterinary Radiographer. I live in Cambridge and currently work part-time at Woodgreen, and part-time teaching radiography at Cambridge Vet School. This gives me some spare time to work on my other passion, illustration. Ten years ago I completed an MA in Children's Book Illustration at the Cambridge School of Art. I am eager to use my artistic skills to share my passion for animal welfare and conservation, which influences my work.
Treating an aye-aye at Jersey Zoo this summer.
I am an imposter, or at least I feel like one most of the time.
​​​​Working at Durrell Wildlife was incredible. I enjoyed having the time to satisfy the animals behavioural needs as well as their general husbandry. The animals became familiar in their behaviour and appearance, enabling me to tell them apart from each other. What’s more, they learned to recognise and trust me. It was a very different relationship to the kind I had with the rescue dogs.
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I found some elements of the job frustrating. It was much easier to identify when there was something wrong with the animals because changes in their behaviour or appearance were much more noticeable. However, it was not always possible for the veterinary staff to check them without a stressful ‘catch up’ because the animals also recognised the veterinary staff and were very distrustful of them. I felt that I would be a much better keeper if I had more veterinary knowledge. It was this that prompted me to return to Wood Green, where I trained as a veterinary nurse and completed a postgraduate diploma in Animal Behaviour. It was the right decision, but leaving Jersey was tough. I return regularly to gain experience with the veterinary department, but a little piece of me wonders how my life would look now if I hadn't left all those years ago.
Training as a veterinary nurse and behaviourist completely changed the way I look at animals. It’s too easy to see something as a machine when you know how its inner workings function. Animals are not machines. I often find myself doing things that would have annoyed me as an animal carer because I get too focused on the area that requires treatment, rather than looking at the entire animal. It was at this point I realised I should take a step back and learn to look at animals as the sentient individuals they are, not as a list of malfunctions.
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Illustration has given me the opportunity to observe animals and see them in a way that I had never attempted in the past. My greatest discovery during the MA was my love of printmaking. I particularly enjoy relief printing and have been using mount-board collographs and vinyl to explore the use of colour and texture in my work. I feel printmaking is often overlooked in non-fiction illustration, but hope to prove that it can be equally as effective.
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I am not an illustrator. I am a veterinary nurse and I am an animal behaviourist. The only time I feel truly comfortable is when I’m working with animals. Whether it’s as a Zoo Keeper or a veterinary nurse, once I put on that uniform it transforms me. I have always been fascinated by animals and would like to inspire the same interest in others. I have turned to children’s book illustration because I want to learn how to communicate my knowledge about animals to children, and their adults.

As a child I loved drawing, particularly animals. It was the only thing that came easily. Being dyslexic I struggled with reading and writing. I couldn’t quite understand why you would describe something using words when you could draw a picture instead. I also liked that drawing was subjective and did not face the same scrutiny as written work. I found it upsetting that creative writing was evaluated in terms of spelling and grammar, without a passing comment on what I was actually trying to communicate. This was not the case in art. Art was open to interpretation. Art was fun.
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Painting and drawing continued to be an important part of my life, but as much as I enjoyed them, I decided not to pursue them at undergraduate level. Instead I wanted to learn more about animals and how to improve their welfare. I had realised from my experience as a volunteer at Woodgreen that there was a huge gap between what the animals in our care require and what we actually provide them. I worked weekends in the kennels at Wood Green throughout the years I spent studying BSc Animal Behaviour at Anglia Ruskin University. The course taught me about a multitude of species and a variety of ways to quantify and qualify their behaviour, but it was the experience I gained at the shelter that was responsible for shaping most of my attitudes towards animals, in particular their welfare.

Working in animal rescue is animal welfare intensified. I am enthusiastic about animal rescue, but it is not always the most enjoyable work. After my undergraduate degree I wanted to regain some perspective by putting some distance between the rescue world and myself. I decided to fulfil my childhood fantasy of becoming a Zoo Keeper for the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in Jersey.
