Where the love of animals began

Following her graduation from a university in 2016, Do My Linh (also known as Dinh Kieu Duong) began joining the conservation industry through her job as a graphic designer at a non-governmental wildlife conservation organisation. Here, her love of animals multiplied and urged her to take more realistic actions.

Do My Linh and her father at her first painting exhibition entitled "Hau's Story" in 2019.

“At that time, I just thought that fate had made me become a part of the community of wildlife conservationists. I felt I should do something really practical and useful. My wildlife conservation activities start here…”, Linh said.

Love turned into action

When watching a short video clip on how Thailand promoted tourism through elephants, published by AJ+ channel on the occasion of World Elephant Day, she could feel the pain and suffering of the elephants. She was very shocked. Linh was even sadder to know that similar tourism activities with elephants also exist in Vietnam. She wanted to share the elephants’ pain to all people, hoping that someone would help them.

Then Linh decided to “draw” the story with captions in Vietnamese and posted them via Facebook with the great aspiration that more Vietnamese people would understand the story and feel the elephants’ suffering conveyed through her paintings.

A painting from the series "The Elephant".

My Linh’s picture story received hundreds of likes just after only one night. Linh realised that many others are also interested in animals and want to protect them like her. Thus, she became determined to use paintings as a call for wildlife protection.

Painting is the softest way to tell a story

For Linh, painting is the softest way to tell a story so that viewers can ponder each painting and word. Therefore, the 9X girl chose this traditional artform to tell stories about animals.

In her paintings, Linh has always tried to turn incomprehensible things into perceivable issues so that viewers of all ages can understand and feel what she wanted to convey through her paintings.

Joy from well-received stories

So far, Linh has released seven works, including one short animation clip and six series of stories, three of which (entitled “The Elephant”, “The second turtle” and “Loris”) have attracted the great attention of readers.

Each series is an exciting and moving story about a kind of animal in need of protection. Linh’s artworks have received consultation from experts and related organisations. Therefore, her paintings are scientific and accurate in addition to having emotional value.

Children are eager to see paintings on sea turtles.

During her career, much unexpected joy has come to Linh as a reward for her efforts. The story related to the story “The second turtle” was one such joy. Soon after it was posted on social networks, a few events related to sea turtles happened in real life. Thanks to these, her stories have received great interest and been shared constantly via different social networks, with very high likes, shares and reposts. Despite no economic benefit, these results have become a motivation for Linh to make more effort on the path she had chosen.

Linh’s paintings and stories have been used by many organisations and individuals to propagate and raise public awareness of wildlife protection. For example, the series “The second turtle” was used by the IUCN Volunteer Group on Sea Turtles for an exhibition entitled “Sea Turtle Festival” to promote the importance of the protection of sea turtles.

Another unexpected joy came from the set of stories “The Elephant”. About six months following its launch, a group of elephant conservationists met Linh, asking for her cooperation. Thanks to them and the values conveyed through Linh’s paintings, the elephant tourism model in Yok Don National Park has changed. The elephants that used to suffer pain as they carried tourists have been released into the wild and visitors can follow them to really see them living and playing freely with their counerparts.

Linh plans to develop content about animal welfare in the future. With her heart filled with love for animals, the young girl has been nurturing many enthusiastic projects. Linh’s path could face many difficulties; however, the joy she feels will lead her to world filled with the love between humans and animals.

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Source: NDO