Robert Bateman

Born in Toronto, Robert Bateman has been a keen artist and naturalist from his early days. He has always painted wildlife and nature, beginning with a representational style, moving through impressionism and cubism to abstract expressionism. In his early thirties he moved back to realism as a more suitable way to express the particularity of the planet. It is this style that has made him one of the foremost artists depicting the world of nature.

In the '70s and early '80s, Bateman's work began to receive critical acclaim and to attract an enormous following. His work is in many public and private collections and several art museums. He was commissioned by the Governor-General of Canada to create a painting as the wedding gift for HRH The Prince Charles from the people of Canada. His work is also represented in the collection of HRH The Prince Philip, the late Princess Grace of Monaco and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Bateman has had many one-man museum shows throughout North America, including an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; most of these shows have drawn record-breaking crowds. His honors, awards and honorary doctorates are numerous; he was made Officer of the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian award. He was awarded the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement. He has also been the subject of three films and several video productions. Three books of his art, The Art of Robert Bateman, The World of Robert Bateman, and Robert Bateman: An Artist in Nature, have made publishing history. A fourth book of his art, Robert Bateman: Natural Worlds, focuses on the importance of natural and cultural heritage. Safari, an illustrated book for young readers, contains firsthand accounts and interesting facts about African wildlife. The book, Thinking Like a Mountain, details Bateman's environmental philosophies and observations and includes pencil sketches throughout.

It is in honor of his contribution to art and conservation that both a public school and a secondary school in Canada have been named after him. With a degree in geography from the University of Toronto, Bateman taught high school for 20 years, including two years in Nigeria. He traveled around the world in a Land Rover in 1957/58, increasing his appreciation of cultural and natural heritage. Since leaving teaching in 1976 to paint full time, he has traveled widely with his wife, Birgit, to many remote natural areas.

Bateman's art reflects his commitment to ecology and preservation. Since the early '60s, he has been an active member of naturalist clubs and other conservation organizations. This involvement has increased in recent years and is now on a global scale. He has become a spokesman for many environmental and preservation issues and has used his artwork and limited edition prints in fund-raising efforts which have provided millions of dollars for these worthy causes. He says, "I can't conceive of anything being more varied and rich and handsome than the planet Earth. And its crowning beauty is the natural world. I want to soak it up, to understand it as well as I can, and to absorb it. And then I'd like to put it together and express it in my painting. This is the way I want to dedicate my work."

Carl Brenders

Carl Brenders' love for all creatures, from the friendly to the ferocious, is evident in his masterful attention to their every detail; nothing is overlooked. With his imagination, Brenders is able to get close enough to wild animals so that he can almost feel their textures. Consequently, his work has tactile reality, giving us the sense of having been where even the most intrepid of field guides have not ventured. Of this ability Brenders says, "A painter is a privileged being, because in his imagination he can come very close to the animals he paints. In reality, one can never come this close to wild animals, particularly if they are predators."

Brenders' insistence on anatomical perfection in his paintings stems from his philosophy that nature itself, is perfection: "That is why I paint the way I do with so much detail and so much realism - I want to capture the perfection" he says.

Born near Antwerp, Belgium; Brenders has drawn since childhood. He studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Antwerp and later in Berchem, and has produced wildlife illustrations for a series of books entitled The Secret Life of Animals. Honored as the 24^th Master Artist at the prestigious 2002 "Birds in Art" Exhibition at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, WI, Brenders' artwork is regularly exhibited in the museum. His art is the subject of the critically acclaimed book, Wildlife: The Nature Paintings of Carl Brenders, published by Harry N. Abrams in association with Mill Pond Press. A major retrospective exhibition of 30 of his works, entitled "Artistry in Nature: The Wildlife Paintings of Carl Brenders," opened at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, PA, before traveling to Cleveland, OH, Louisville, KY, and Shreveport, LA. He also has paintings hanging in National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, WY.

The wildlife images of Brenders' art are first created from pencil sketches. From these sketches his mixed media paintings of watercolor and gouache are completed with a technique he has developed over the years. His paintings, encompassing every intricacy of nature, devote equal attention to the detail of the wildlife subject in it's habitat. As well as the mood created by the light.

Although Brenders feels that there are not enough hours in a lifetime to do all the paintings he would like, he deems details as small and common as lichens worthy of his time and attention. In his words "if it takes a lichen 200 years to grow as large as a coin, surely he can devote the extra hours necessary to perfectly capture it's every characteristic".

An intense man who sees minutia that escapes the average viewer, Brenders' art allows us to see what he sees, exactly as he sees it - in comparison, everything else seems out of focus.

A dedicated conservationist, Brenders has raised awareness for environmental and conservation causes with his art which enjoys international acclaim. He is widely collected in north America, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, Holland, Argentina and in his native Belgium.


Andrew Denman

Andrew Denman is an artist known for capturing diverse subjects, from wildlife, to landscape, to still life, in an equally diverse range of styles. While Denman does not eschew the term "wildlife artist", his work has moved well beyond the genre, sometimes incorporating modern art elements as well as subject matter that most traditional wildlife artists avoid.

Denman holds a BA in Fine Arts from Saint Mary's College in Moraga, CA. He is well known in the Bay Area as both an artist and teacher, and he has gained national attention through his involvement with Pacific Wildlife Galleries in Lafayette, CA, the Society of Animal Artists, NY, and feature coverage in such publications as American Artist and Wildlife Art.
 
Born in 1978, the Bay Area native showed a great degree of interest in art from an early age. Denman organized his first one man show in high school at a local library, and soon after began participating in exhibitions with Pacific Wildlife Galleries. Since then, Denman has held two highly successful one-man shows at Pacific Wildlife, with a third scheduled for April of 2005. Locally, he has also participated in exhibits at the Bedford and Hearst Galleries, and the Oakland Museum. His work has toured nationally with Birds in Art and the Society of Animal Artists, which has honored Andrew's work with Awards of Excellence for two consecutive years.

Whether painting an animal in its natural habitat or juxtaposing it against an abstract background, Denman goes to great lengths to faithfully portray his subjects, taking frequent field trips to nature areas, parks, and zoos to observe his subjects and acquire reference material. Yet while accuracy is always of great importance, Denman is an artist before he is a naturalist. The sense of fearless experimentation and originality he brings to his paintings testifies to the artist's true focus. As Mary Nelson writes in the Nov/Dec 2004 issue of Wildlife Art magazine, "In the end, it's not the mood, the meaning, or the method that Denman craves.It is the medium-art."