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The winner of the Association of Animal Artists Inaugural Chairman’s Award 2019 Lisa Ann Watkins.
Lisa Ann wins this award at a point in her career when she is beginning to branch out with her art into new and different areas, including working on her first book and teaching coloured pencil art workshops overseas, including in the USA. With an impressive number of social media followers, Lisa Ann has managed to maintain the connection with her audience, inspiring them to progress their artistic skills and knowledge of their craft, whilst sharing her love of animals.
After gaining a degree in Fashion and Textile Design, Lisa Ann’s creative journey has taken a long route as she turned away from art for several years. Finally, inspired to find her creative side once again, she started drawing with coloured pencils, winning art competitions and gaining confidence. Exhibitions followed, magazine articles were written and as her teaching style develops so Lisa Ann has found different outlets to reach her audience with. Lisa Ann encourages her followers to learn not only about art but about the business side of working as an artist. She generously talks about her own career decisions and more recently has shared interviews with other working artists in their studios. She also shares her experiences of trying other art media and techniques.
Lisa Ann’s determination to help animal welfare and conservation shines through. Animals are not only the focus of her artwork but of her life. The use of social media enables Lisa Ann’s followers to engage with her tangible involvement with animal rescue centres and sanctuaries around the world. Lisa Ann uses her artwork to help support wildlife conservation; her artwork has featured in wildlife exhibitions where she has not only built awareness but helped to raise funds.
The judges admire the way Lisa Ann manages a multi-faceted career as a coloured pencil artist, generously sharing her own artistic practice whilst all the while giving a voice to animals she not only shares her life with, but loves to create images of.
Courtesy of Anne Coreless Association of Animal Artists
Anna-Louise Shortlisted for Lifetime Achievement Award
TWASI patron Anna-Louise Pickering is honoured to have been named as a finalist in the prestigious national Animal Star Awards, which have been described as the BAFTAs of the animal World! Anna-Louise has been selected from a field of over 50 entries as a finalist in the Lifetime Achievement category
The Animal Star Awards were founded by Mary Burgess, an animal lover who wanted to create an award to give recognition to animals & people who have achieved extraordinary things. The annual event celebrates people doing great things for animals, as well as animals that do extraordinary things for people. This year’s winners will be announced in a glittering ceremony at the Marriott Hotel in Portsmouth on the 19th October.
Anna-Louise is an acclaimed writer, photographer and conservationist, who has dedicated her entire life to the welfare of endangered, sick and vulnerable creatures. For fifteen years she ran a registered hospital for birds of prey from her home. Caring mainly for injured and orphaned raptors, she also rehabilitated British mammals, including foxes, hares and squirrels.
Alongside her late Mother, the Internationally Acclaimed Wildlife Artist Pollyanna Pickering she co-founded the Pollyanna Pickering Foundation, a small but effective non-profit organisation which campaigns internationally to prevent the exploitation of wildlife and raises funds to support animal welfare and conservation projects worldwide. Since Pollyanna’s sudden and unexpected passing last year, Anna-Louise has been committed to continuing and expanding the work of the Foundation. In the last twelve months alone the Foundation has funded a unit for rehabilitating orphaned otter cubs in Scotland, built a hedgehog rescue unit in Surrey, purchased camera traps for use in tracking snow leopards in the Himalayas, and helped to create a ‘shock free zone’ for wildlife in the rainforests of Costa Rica by insulating power lines – alongside many smaller projects.
Along with Pollyanna, Anna-Louise has undertaken a remarkable series of expeditions – covering all seven continents – to study endangered species in their natural habitats. She has travelled by dog sled in the High Arctic, camping on the ice at temperatures of -40, canoed through crocodile infested rivers, and been charged by a wild tiger in search of her subjects. She has trekked in the Bale mountains of Ethiopia to photograph the Simien wolf– the rarest wolf in the world, and the only wolf in Africa, there are none in captivity anywhere in the world. She was the first western woman ever to travel into a remote area of the Tibetan borderlands, where she worked in a hospital for sick pandas.
The resulting photographs and articles about her expeditions have appeared in publications worldwide highlighting the plight of threatened species and environments, and she is the author of five critically acclaimed books.
Anna-Louise is dedicated in her support of other charities, acting as Patron of societies including North Derbyshire Animal Support, Parrotaid and Cats in Need, and she is a Trustee of the African/Asian Conservation Trust.
She also continues to work with Pollyanna’s incredibly legacy of artwork, which continues to be published by charities including the WWF, the Born Free Foundation and the RSPB, raising funds for the causes closest to both their hearts.
Congratulations to the following TWASI members who made it to the final of the David Shepherd Wildlife Artist of the Year 2019 and made some sales already.
Julia Dubinina International Member, Neal Griffin, Christina Lensces, David Skidmore and Sarah Trenchard.
https://davidshepherd.org/art/wildlife-artist-year/wildlife-artist-of-the-year-shortlist
Please click on the links below to view news from previous years –
A Walk on the wild side Newsletter
A Brush with Africa
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November 2019 Newsletter
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