Tara Joy grew up in a small, yet infamous, town called Glastonbury, in the South West of England. Glastonbury has a flourishing community of artists and therefore she was surrounded by many inspiring artists from early childhood. Both her mother and father are ecologists and artists so the combination of art and nature has been a theme throughout her life.

“As a child I spent a lot of time watching and accompanying my father in making nature art, landscape garden features and sculptures. This instilled a love for gardening, sculpture, using the natural materials from the surrounding environment and getting very messy while making art. I was also very inspired by my mother’s profound poetry and writing that often looked into the harmful environmental and social changes that humanity have brought about on planet Earth and positive ways to resolve them. I am so glad to have had this combination of intense care for nature and  practical engagement with it as my early influences. I feel fortunate to have grown up playing in and exploring places of natural beauty. I often look at nature in wonder and hope that I can be like a sponge, soaking up some of its magnificence and beauty, so that at some future time it can be released through my artistic expressions. Writing stories and poems and illustrating them have also been passions of mine since childhood.”

Tara Joy’s is driven by a strong desire to help in finding and applying the necessary solutions to the environmental and social instability that is occurring  around the world. She uses her art as one of the tools to do this.

“I have found that my love for art and love for nature are very compatible, more compatible than I could have realised when I first started actively working for environmental conservation.  In 2005, along with my mother Stella Joy, I co-founded an environmental NGO called Active Remedy Ltd. This was spurred by our deep concern about instability that ecosystem degradation was creating within the global water cycle and climate systems and how it was threatening all life on Earth and all the things that we loved. Since then we have worked continuously to increase awareness about the essential role that interlinking ecosystems play in maintaining and regulating the global water and climate cycles and in promoting and aiding the conservation and restoration of these essential ecosystems. I once felt that my art was not as serious and important as my work for environmental conservation. However over the years I have found that not only have I been able to use my art to financially support work for the environment but I have been able to use it as a highly effective tool for communication and education.”

Tara Joy uses her art as a medium for raising awareness and funds for preserving the environment. She donates  profits from the sale of her art to Active Remedy Ltd. so that Active Remedy Ltd. can continue with the work for safeguarding the global water cycle and the essential ecosystems which it is dependant upon. When possible, she also supports other social or environmental causes that she feels are important.

Tara does her best use art materials that are not harmful to the environment and prints her books with a printer that prints using vegetable-based inks on FSC approved paper. It is her wish that in the future she will be able to print all her books on paper made from more environmentally sustainable crops like nettle, hemp and bamboo.