Watercolour artist Sylvia Lovell (1911-2003) had an adventurous childhood which instilled in her a great affinity with nature. Her family were stationed on rugged Kāpiti Island, with her father being the sole ranger. Both parents were active wildlife photographers and were regularly published in books and magazines.

Lovell boarded at Wellington Girls College in the 1920s. Her school holidays were spent on the island with only her family, a dog, a horse and a set of watercolours. In the 1970s Lovell wrote about her experiences as a teenager in a self-illustrated, unpublished manuscript which has subsequently been made available as a PDF on her son’s website Raylovell.co.nz/kapitiisland. The autobiography is lusciously descriptive and contains several poems.

Lovell settled in Levin and continued to paint the Kāpiti coast and surrounding region in all its rugged and stormy intensity. In 2004, after a lengthy deliberation by Department of Conservation bureaucracy, her ashes were scattered at the highest point of Kāpiti Island fulfilling her final wish so that her spirit could wander free amidst the places she loved and cherished.