This year's Cover Competition was won by Carolyn Jenkins. The two runners up were Janie Pirie and Clive Meredith.
Congratulations to our winners, and thank you to all who took part!
Carolyn was born in London and now lives in Brighton on the south coast of England. She studied art and graphic design at St Martins School of Art in London and Bath Academy of Art. For several years she has worked as an illustrator for publishing, advertising and graphic design companies contributing to several publications. She is also a professional gardener. Painting plants and flowers in watercolour brings together her love of art and gardening.
In 2011, she studied for a diploma in Botanical Painting at the English Gardening School for which she was awarded 'Distinction' and 'Best Student'.
She has won two RHS medals for her botanical paintings at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Botanical Art Show; a Gold and ‘Best Exhibit’ in 2011 and a Silver in 2016.
The RHS Lindley Library have purchased two of her paintings for its collection; Helleborus x hybridus and Dahlia 'Arabian Night'. In America the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation also holds one of her paintings in it’s collection.
Her most recent work includes illustrations for Crabtree & Evelyn, Marks and Spencer, The Sunday Times Magazine, Hobbs and illustrating the book: H.R.H The Prince of Wales, Highgrove, A Garden Celebrated.
Look out for Carolyn's painting on the cover of our next catalogue - out in October!
Janie is one of the UK's best known coloured pencil botanical illustrators. From a very early age she was drawing all the flowers and vegetables her father used to grow in his garden and on his allotment. After leaving school she studied, initially, at Northampton School of Art and then at the Colchester School of Art some twenty years later.
She returned to the workplace as a PR and marketing manager for a horticultural company and this led to an even greater love of plants. Since then Janie has enjoyed much success illustrating children's books and short stories for leading women's magazines but moved over to drawing plants seriously about nine years ago. This work has led to many accolades including two gold medals from the Royal Horticultural Society, Certificates of Botanical Merit from the Society of Botanical Artists and recognition from The Hunt Institute of Botanical Documentation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA.
Although enjoying much success with her plant illustrations and botanical paintings Janie also draws beautiful human and animal portraits, together with still life pictures. As a member of the UK Coloured Pencil Society her work has been accredited with many awards at their annual exhibitions including Best In Show, Reserve Best In Show, Best Portrait, Best Still Life, Best Botanical, Runner-up Best Botanical and many others.
Her work is sold nationally and internationally with collectors constantly on the lookout for her latest pieces.
Janie's meticulous and beautifully detailed work shows the depth of skill she has with the coloured pencil and close scrutiny will only serve to confirm that it can take more than 150 hours to produce each piece.
When teaching Janie takes each student through every stage of the process necessary to achieve the very best with coloured pencils. Starting with observation, then composition, the drawing, transferring to good quality art paper and then building up layers of colour until they have created a rich and gloriously coloured picture. Before each step she will demonstrate so that students know exactly what they are being asked to do. Group and individual demonstrations are also given throughout each teaching day.
Janie's aim is to show how exciting the coloured pencil can be and for each student to create something they are proud of, but most of all that the journey is enjoyable and they have some fun.
Hampshire-based Clive Meredith has been a professional artist since 1993 and specialises in detailed portrayals of wildlife from Britain and abroad.
Clive’s initial interest in wildlife and the countryside was fostered in his early years.The son of a dairy farmer he spent hours out of doors in the Shropshire countryside,where he grew up, birdwatching and observing our native animals.Nowadays clive can often be found armed with camera and binoculars walking the shoreline at his home in Warsash or in the more exotic climes of the Far East or Africa looking for subjects and inspiration for his paintings and drawings.
Working in both graphite pencil and oils, Clive is entirely self-taught ,with each painting or drawing created over many hours with meticulous attention to detail,aided by an extensive knowledge of his wildlife subjects and many hours spent in the field observing and photographing them to achieve the stunning realism that he is renowned for.Clive believes it is absolutely vital to observe his subjects in there natural environment to be able to distill something of the animals character into every image.
Whether in oils or graphite the focus of his images is very much centred on the animal,preferring a detailed depiction with drama often added by the use of atmospheric lighting and clever cropping.
A published artist with over 60 limited edition releases and a large collector base for both his original artworks and his limited edition prints,Clive’s art can be found in galleries and homes throughout the UK and worldwide.
Clive has exhibited widely with annual appearances at many prestigious events including the Royal windsor horse show,Badminton horse trials,NEWA,the CLA Game fair,New Forest and Hampshire county show and The London International Horse show to name but a few.
Clives works have made regular appearances in the DSWF Wildlife Artist of the Year competition at The Mall Galleries in London gaining a ‘highly commended’ award.He was also named Wildlife Artist of the Year 2010 by Wildscape magazine after winning the prestigious annual competition with his stunning drawing ‘The Egret Pool’.
His work has been featured in many publications including Wildscape magazine,Hampshire Life,Solent Life magazine and Artist’s and Illustrator’s magazine.
Animal conservation and rehabilitation are causes dear to the artists heart and Clive has been fortunate enough to be able to use his original artworks and prints to help raise vital funds for many vital wildlife charities over the years.
