Jason Monet: A life lived large (in memoriam).

from THE JAKARTA POST -- THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 2009 -- PAGE 27 Bali-based artist and conservation activist Jason William Francis Monet was a charismatic, larger-than-life figure, the bold strokes of his paintings echoing the scale on which he lived his life.

Born on May 3, 1938, in Sutton Dwellings in London, Jason's earliest memories were of a world at war. His father, one-legged Edwin Daw, injured in the World War I, welcomed his ninth son with a shocked "Jesus!" His mother, Madeline Louise Monet, hopefully and prophetically named the last of her brood Jason after a character in a novel who became an artist.

Madeline was not disappointed. By the time Jason was seven, he was spending most of his spare time at London's Natural History Museum drawing the animals on display; his two great passions - art and wildlife - were already converging.

At 13 he was enrolled at the Christopher Wren Technical School of Graphic Art. By his early 20s, Jason was gaining international recognition as an …