In 1996, I had been going through one of those intense periods in which I was trying to push my poor brain into coming up with new and original ideas. I wasn't having much luck, but in my sketch book, I had two rather silly ideas for cartoon type paintings which I thought I might as well try.

Illegal raves in random fields were all the rage in the early 1990's, so one of the ideas was for a young man, dressed in typical raver's clothes (smiley T-shirt, mirror glasses, frizzy hair) who was dancing in a field, completely oblivious to the fact that he was surrounded by a herd of curious and bemused cows. The title of the painting was going to be 'The Art of Knowing When to Go Home'.

The news in England in 1996 was dominated by stories of mad cow disease, genetic modification and the cloning of animals. So naturally, the thought flashed through my mind, why not `genetically modify' these black and white Friesian cows into blue and white? Which I did. When I stood back from the painting, I immediately fell in love with the blue and white cows but, sadly, not the young raver, so I painted him out and was left with the first ever painting of the Genetic Zoo series.

I was very excited by the painting, the cows seemed to have come alive with great energy and fun and I immediately painted a few more and decided to apply the same idea to other animals. In the first weeks, these included cats (based on my own cat 'Wooster'), pigs, sheep, rabbits and badgers but then I tried more exotic species like penguins, buffalo, lions, rhinos, giraffes and zebras (some worked better than others!). I was even commissioned to paint camels by someone working at the British high commission in Pakistan to be used as a charity Christmas card.

Within a month or two, I had enough paintings for the first Genetic Zoo Exhibition, which I entitled 'Unpickled' (sorry Damien). The idea generated a surprising amount of media and publishing company interest and a year later, small prints of some of the animals were on sale in 87 countries around the world.

Ten years after that first genetic zoo exhibition, I still receive almost daily emails from people around the world who have seen the animals for the first time and who are still as excited by them as others were all that time ago. I still regularly push my brain for new ideas and some of them have been successful in their own right but I doubt whether any of them will ever compare with the sheer fun and lovability of the "Genetic Zoo".

Lee Woods 2006