The Beaty Biodiversity Museum is Vancouver’s natural history museum, dedicated to creating a shared sense of community and wonder. The museum puts UBC's natural history collections, with more than two million specimens, on public view for the first time. Among our treasures are a 26-metre-long blue whale skeleton suspended in the Djavad Mowafaghian Atrium, the third-largest fish collection in the nation, and myriad fossils, shells, insects, fungi, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and plants from around British Columbia and the world. Come visit us at 2212 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC. You can find more info at beatymuseum.ubc.ca or sign up for our e-newsletter.

Wider Symmetries

Watercolours by Lex Alfred Hedley

August 30 - November 12, 2012

“In quiet contemplation, I am moved by the wider symmetries that connect the self and nature; the ebb and flow of the tides, the arrival and departure of migrating birds, the coming and going of the seasons.” - Lex Alfred Hedley

Artist Statement

Birds are an important part of my life.

They draw me out of an urban world, with all its distraction and stress, into very special places, where no rushed hours advance one upon another; where life is slowed down, where there is an entirely different heartbeat.

In these places, by their very nature; their beauty, their wildness and desire for distance, birds compel moments of interlude. Sitting quietly, I can fully appreciate their exquisite elegance and grace as living creatures.

It is in these tranquil moments that my mind best absorbs and reshapes its perceptions of the external world.

In quiet contemplation, I am moved by the wider symmetries that connect the self and nature; the ebb and flow of the tides, the arrival and departure of migrating birds, the coming and going of the seasons.

Over time, one becomes aware of other, more personal connections and sensations; how sometimes the lives of birds parallel our own, how they connect us to one another and, most importantly, how their presence energizes and renews the human spirit.

Artist’s Biography

Born in the far north of New Zealand in Whangarei in 1952, Lex misspent his youngest days out on his bike in the countryside looking for birds and their nests. While enjoying the thrill of encountering these creatures going about their daily lives, he discovered an ability to sketch and paint birds. Educated in the far south of New Zealand at Knox College, Dunedin, Lex continued his interest in birds, which was deepened by his early appreciation of the specialness of these encounters, and further developed his abilities with brush and paint.

In 1979, Lex met and married Sandra who said ‘you must do something with this gift.’ They then relocated to Europe to experience new landscapes, paint European birds and to further Lex’s appreciation and understanding of 17th Century Dutch art. In 1989, Lex and Sandra came to North America with their daughter Rachel; Lex experienced a new and vastly more complex northern landscape and to paint its bird life.

In 2012, with over twenty years of experience of North American birds and landscapes, and a more complete understanding of their place in our lives, Lex is now completing a manuscript for his first book.

For more information, please visit our website