The Overall Winning Artists Category consists of the 10 Best Entries received from the 3 media categories of the Painting & Other Category, 3D Art Category and the Photography & Digital Category.
The winning artists will now be featured on the Light Space & Time website for the month of June 2017 and thereafter, the artworks and links to the artist’s websites will remain online in the Light Space & Time Archives.
Congratulations to our artists who made our 7th Annual “Animals” Art Exhibition so successful this month. At any time, we invite our winners and other interested visitors to link their websites to the Gallery’s Archive section for further ongoing promotion.
The Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery will have digital “Animals” Award Certificates, Event Postcard, and Press Releases sent to the winning artists within the next week or so. Thank you to all of the artists who participated and for being a part of the gallery. To return to the Animals Home Page here.
1st Place – Donna L. Byers – “Little Trumpet”
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Donna L. Byers is a Canadian artist from Osoyoos, British Columbia, who has been painting since she was only three years old.
At the age of five when Donna's painting of a giant rabbit was chosen as the 'official' Easter Bunny for the kindergarten class, she knew that art would be her life's passion, just as it is for several of her family members.
Donna comes from a family of artists, designers, and writers. Donna is a mother of two boys and has been self-employed most of her life in a variety of different businesses, working long hours juggling the demands of work and family. After decades of letting everyday life get in the way of her art, at the age of 58 she is finally making time to be back at the easel, and is making plans to open her own art gallery with a working studio which will not only feature her own works,, but will also showcase local artists working on site.
Donna loves a challenge and is always pushing herself to refine her skills. She spent most of 2016 doing watercolor pieces and is focusing this year on oils, acrylics, mixed media paintings and pet portraits. Donna’s website: www.biggerpicturestudio.com
2nd Place – Lou Ann Goodrich – “Fisher on a Log”
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A lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest, Lou Ann Goodrich currently resides in Oregon where she maintains and enjoys forested acreage preserved for wildlife.
An environmentalist, she is an active proponent of healthy ecosystems and habitat conducive to maintaining diversity and sustainability for wildlife and the natural world. Animals have always been a large part of her life and after retiring from a career in medicine she pursued photography to record and express the beauty of the natural world.
Now a passionate photographer of wildlife and nature, she particularly strives to portray species-specific behavior in her images. Recently she has diversified and added digital photo-artistry to her skills which allows an additional creativity and artistic presentation of her images. Lou Ann's Website: www.louanngoodrich-photoartist.com
3rd Place - Thomas Hester - "Jaguar"
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Long before Computer Generated Images (CGI 3D computer graphics used for creating scenes or special effects in film and television) were used for movie special effects and character design, gifted artists created them. Tom Hester was one of those artists whose career has evolved with technology. It began with the American Werewolf in London to Harry and the Hendersons (both Oscar winners). Then there were the convincing simian performances of Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan and Gorillas in the Mist. Outside of live-action film work and his personal fine art bronze sculptures, Tom made a mark in the CGI field as the lead Character Designer for DreamWorks’ animated blockbusters, Shrek, Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third.
Tom Hester grew up in the San Gabriel Valley. As with many adolescent boys, he had a fascination with fantastical beings such as monsters. When he was just 13 years old, Tom had the opportunity to visit a workshop in which Halloween monster masks were made and this very moment influenced the rest of Tom’s life.
But it takes more than playing with clay and making latex molds to create an impressive career. Tom attributes his orthopedic surgeon father with motivating him to study human and wildlife anatomy. His mother, who worked at the Natural History Museum, encouraged Tom to volunteer there thus exposing him to animatics and lifelike animal sculptures. Tom’s own disciplined pre-med studies in anatomy enabled him to master his sculpting skills at academic levels.
Under the tutelage of the legendary special effects master Rick Baker, Tom began his career in character design for animation and film. The first movie that Tom worked on was American Werewolf in London, which won Oscar gold for its special effects. Considered a masterpiece in cinema, Tom’s understanding of anatomy and fine art sculpting skills helped give the film authenticity to its supernatural savagery. Working with a team of technicians, Tom did this by creating body casts that would stretch and change for one shot to bring about the physical transformation of a werewolf. The whole process took up to ten hours a day as they applied multiple body casts that would stretch and change for each scene leading to the most memorable physical werewolf transformation to date.
Long before the animation Shrek, Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third hit the theaters, Tom Hester plunged deep into his imagination and developed the main characters for these blockbusters. Employed by DreamWorks as a Character Designer, Tom spent over two years with five directors in intensive research designing and sculpting the bulldog-like character Shrek to be ugly but at the same time appealing. Once a final design was established, the CGI animators scanned Tom’s characters into their computers and created the movements of the main character that we are familiar with today. Tom continued to advise the animators and technicians on his characters anatomical movements for complete accuracy and authentic movement.
Despite all his film and animation successes, Tom began to pine away for his traditional roots as a wildlife sculptor. He has since focused his career on sculpting, bronze casting and showing his work in fine art galleries. Tom’s Website: www.hesterstudios.com
4th Place - Caroline Evans - "Sneachta (Snow Leopard Cub)"
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With a style considered more illustrative than painterly, Caroline’s subject matter glorifies the beauty of nature, both fauna, and flora. She is a multi-award-winning artist and illustrator whose artwork sits in two opposing ends of the genre spectrum - Realism and Fantasy. Her preferred mediums are pen, ink, colored pencil and pastels, plus the occasional dash of the metallic leaf which she uses to enhance her ink fantasy drawings and more experimental work.
She has a particular fondness for portraying wild cats and in her words, ‘Apart from their overall majesty and grace, I find their eyes particularly mesmerizing. I always work on the eyes first and it’s only once I’m happy with them, that I start on the rest of the body and background. I’m particularly inspired by the wildlife paintings of David Shepherd. The atmosphere he creates in his paintings of African wildlife takes me straight back to Africa – I can feel the heat and dust; he also captures the light so beautifully.’
Born and raised in Thailand, Caroline was exposed to an exotic and colorful environment, living there at a time when 70% of the country was still forested. Her life was further enhanced by the glorious fauna and flora prevalent in East and South Africa, where she then lived for 17 years. She attributes her love of animals to always having them in her life in one form or another, and to her mother, who taught her how to care for and respect them. Caroline feels deeply about the demise of our wildlife and planet, and is currently producing a series of paintings and illustrations depicting critically endangered, vulnerable and threatened animals. She regularly donates her wildlife Limited Edition prints to auctions held by smaller and less well-known animal charities to help raise funds and awareness.
‘I’m so fortunate to have seen wildlife in their natural environment and find it hard to accept that the generations after me may never again get the opportunity to do so. I truly believe that an animal’s spirit dies when in captivity yet realize that sadly, this will shortly be the only way to see them. I console myself with the fact that there are a lot of zoos and conservation organizations that are doing everything they can to educate the public and where possible, release animals back into the wild. But the list of endangered and vulnerable animals is steadily growing, which means that portraying them all is definitely going to be a lifelong project!’
Now based in London, Caroline has exhibited at galleries in the Rep of Ireland and England and sold to buyers across the globe. Her work is currently being exhibited at the Mardleybury Gallery in Hertfordshire and she has just finished illustrating a children’s story/ coloring book which was recently launched in England.
Caroline is a member of the UK Association of Illustrators, the UK Coloured Pencil Society, the SAA and the Cat Survival Trust, a registered UK Charity founded in 1976 whose main objective is the on-site housing of an array of wild cat species for education and conservation purposes, acquired from zoos and other collections. Caroline’s Website: www.carolineevans.net
5th Place – Judi Lapsley Miller - "An Urban Jungle"
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Judi Lapsley Miller is from Wellington, New Zealand. Her art is inspired by the wildlife and land of Aotearoa-New Zealand, the awesome forces that went into making them (and continue to make them), and the tensions between the pre-human and modern world. She strives through her art to advocate for endangered species and spaces by exploring themes like the tenacity of life in the face of environmental destruction, what it means to be endangered, and the post-human world. Many of her images are inspired by her experiences with volunteering in wildlife conservation projects. Photography is just the first step in her creative process – she digitally blends and masks layers of photographs, graphics, scanned ephemera and textures, lighting and color adjustments, and digital brushstrokes to form an image that is more painting than a photograph. In her images, she exposes her interpretation of the inner world of others – their thoughts and feelings, their hopes and desires – in a form tangible to the human viewer that engenders empathy with other living creatures.
In June, Judi has a solo exhibition at Zealandia EcoSanctuary (Wellington, New Zealand) where she is presenting work from three series that explore Zealandia’s vision. Sales will support Zealandia's conservation work:
Judi’s Website: www.artbyjlm.com
6th Place - Cher Anderson - "The Hunter"
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Cher Anderson, born in 1962, in Kingston, New York, was raised in Mexico City and greatly influenced by the culture and the country's vast amount of artists, both present, and past. In her teenage years, she was relocated to Texas where she began showing her interest in fine arts, mostly painting.
Through self-instruction, she achieved having several one-woman shows including an invitation to the City of Chihuahua, Mexico by the governor, where she exhibited. Her art focused on the beauty of women and animals and was always fascinated with their eyes making them the focus of her work. Later on, she moved to Phoenix with her very young son and proceeded to get her degree in Graphic Design and Advertising. She spent the following years being a single mother and starting her own company so she could work from home. Growing rapidly, she was noticed and hired by a nutritional company to be their in-house label and advertising designer. This is also where she met her future husband. During these years she worked long hours, slept little and traveled a lot. While doing so she began her love affair with the camera. That became more so with the advent of digital photography and encountering wildlife in their natural environments.
Painting took on a whole new perspective while using the camera and travel to far and hidden places to get "The Shot" to use as a reference for her next work of art. Tedious and long hours were spent making sure every single detail is translated onto the canvas with minute detail. Cher and her husband raise giraffes, zebras and Andalusian horses on their ranch in Arizona.
In her lifetime, she has painted and sold over 250 original paintings, was blessed to raise an amazing son, seen half the world, found the love of her life and met incredible people that became her family all over the world. Cher’s Website: www.cherscreations.com
7th Place - Sheri Emerson - "Deadly Duo"
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Sheri has been a photographer her entire life, from a child snapping pictures with her 110 camera, to her first SLR, and finally into the digital world. She also has been an artist her entire life, winning her first art competition at the grand old age of five.
In the past few years, she has intensively studied both Photoshop and Lightroom to learn how to enhance her photography and turn it into digital art. In the past eight months, she has been published in “Living the Photo Artistic Life” seven times, Readers Digest “Our Canada” magazine, “Photoshop Creative UK” magazine twice, and “Fine Eye Magazine” for fine art photography twice, and has been recognized for her work in ShiftArt.com challenges as well as winning numerous Facebook “Photo of the Day” challenges. Sheri splits her time between Arizona and Labrador, Canada, and is dedicating herself to pushing her photography and digital art even further. Her work is currently being sold on the curated ArtBoja website, and https://muddwoman4.wixsite.com/sheriemerson.
8th Place - Eugene Rubuls - "Jungle Grace"
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“Nature is the source of my inspiration. Everything I manifest and render is focused on harmony within her laws.”
Eugene uses most vivid colors in a vigorous application to express the uniqueness and define a representation of wildlife attractiveness.
His practice reflects a lifelong affinity with nature. It’s a contemporary exploration and transgression of the wildlife where figurative perfection dissolves into the evocation of mystery spaces and spontaneous yet equitable range of color.
Remarkable comprehension of mixed media enabled him to develop the most distinctive and recognizable manner that bridges the gap between the traditional academic approach and modern abstract art.
Eugene’s creations are not limited to any one subject or medium and demonstrate his outstanding perception and ability to focus on capturing details.
Eugene Rubuls is widely recognized European artist who has successfully exhibited in art shows and galleries around Europe, Russia, and Australia. His commission art can be found in private collections in the U.S., Japan, Australia and Europe. Eugene’s Website: www.eugenerubulsart.com
9th Place - Ann Wehner - "The Elephant Walk"
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Born and raised in Melbourne, Ann had dabbled in acrylic painting at school as a teenager. As an adult, she found a new creative outlet when she discovered Digital Photo Artistry a few years ago whilst surfing the internet. She continues to perfect her style and techniques whilst studying under the mentorship of Sebastian Michaels in his KAIZEN group.
Ann is so passionate about her art and being able to bring ideas which have existed only in her mind's eye to life, for viewers to see the story as she has seen it. Creating art is her daily passion and hours can fly by unnoticed whilst she is on her computer.
Ann has had her art regularly published in “Living the Photo Artistic Life” magazine and more recently she has had her art featured on the front cover of the inaugural issue of the “Artists Down Under – Australia and New Zealand” magazine as well as being one of the featured artists for this issue. Ann’s art can be seen at www.annwehnerdigitalartistry.com
10th Place - Fiona Groom - "Oh No Not You Again"
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After moving from New South Wales to the Sunshine Coast in Queensland Fiona Groom was given the opportunity to begin her artistic journey. Even though she had enjoyed art making based on Animal Life in the past the chance to study was a great way to learn and evolve her art practice. After completing a Fine Arts Diploma and then a BA in Fine Arts Visual Culture Fiona began to continue her love of Nature in the best way she knew; painting...
Fiona has said her work has always been traditional realism and the natural world. For her, the animal kingdom is the motivating power behind the art she creates and looking at her subject’s personality, their expression along with the humor that is often present she finds that her paintings begin to tell their own story.
From her small studio at home Fiona’s painting process commences with an idea and then a quick sketch, her photography is the starting point as she begins to look through the ever-growing image files that she has accumulated on the computer. These images have been taken on numerous trips to a variety of Australian Zoo’s and once she has found what she is after a mock-up of the composition is created using printed images. From there the picture outlines are quickly transferred to the canvas to ensure the position and perspective are correct and from there underpainting soon starts. When that’s complete she begins to paint in the detail and the animal subject comes to life. Fiona uses only acrylics as she has found them an easy medium to work with, she has said that “I’m too impatient to work with oils I like to get on with it and finish the painting” Her blending technics along with her fine brushstrokes help to create fur and feathers producing a reality that emulates her original subjects.
For Fiona, the eyes have always played an important role in the painting as it through them that she often adds a landscape giving the viewer not just the animal but also a sneak peek into the world in which they live. Fiona has also remarked that “Painting gives a feeling of satisfaction, a place to relax, reflect and get lost in the process.” She feels that by painting whenever she can her technique improves and evolves making it easy to learn and grow as an artist which in turn fuels a passion for what she is able to create.
Since starting her painting career Fiona has had the opportunity to exhibit her work in a variety of arts festivals and group exhibitions such as the International Nature in Art which saw her awarded a highly commended certificate, and she was also invited to exhibit her work in an International Art Exhibition at Gallera360 in Florence. Fiona has also exhibited her work in some small Solo exhibitions throughout the Sunshine Coast and is represented by several local galleries. Her work is also in private collections throughout the world, here in Australia as well as the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Europe and the US. Some recent publications have seen her work featured on the cover of Creative Artist magazine Issue 11 2016 which included a 10-page spread of her work and a workshop showing her painting process. She was also featured in a coffee table book titled Amazing Australian Artists…Professionally Fiona’s activities have included several short-term Artist residencies along with the position of Gallery Curator at Yandina Historic House a local gallery for the past 10 years. This has given her plenty of opportunities to work with other Artists, organize and present artwork and become involved in an assortment of local community events.
As a passionate animal artist Fiona Groom strives to create images that evoke a response in the viewer. It is her intention to get a reaction by bringing a smile and a sense of wonder at nature’s diversity to the observer. Therefore it is Animal life and the natural world that provide her with an unending source of ideas for her art and from that a chance to explore and evolve as an Artist, enabling documentation of what she sees and encourages the creation of a realistic portrait of animal life. Fiona’s Website: www.fmgfionagroomvisualartist.com
