19 Year Old Artist Auctions Pixelated Gorilla Painting to Benefit Paignton Zoo

By Phillip Knowling

Paignton, UK - A talented young Torquay artist is raising money for a local conservation charity with a picture painted with a matchstick.

Annie Drew’s giant 1 metre square painting of a silverback gorilla will be sold off in a silent auction to raise funds for wildlife charity Paignton Zoo Environmental Park.

The painting - entitled Silverback – has been created in a unique pixelated style and contains around 75,000 dots of paint in 40 colours.

In addition, 19 year old Annie is rubbing shoulders with the cream of British wildlife artists at an exhibition at Haddon Galleries in Torquay. The exhibition - A Brush With The Wild – features top British professional wildlife artists Pip McGarry, Tony Forrest and Paul Apps. All three will be exhibiting new works at the exhibition and will be making personal appearances at the gallery between 10:00am and 4:00pm on Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th November.

Annie, who is showing three paintings in a series on British wildlife at the exhibition, is inspired by nature. She created the gorilla portrait using paint in a mosaic technique, applied with a piece of wood the size of a matchstick. She said: “I wanted to create a piece of wildlife art in mosaic, however, the tiles weren’t giving me the desired effect and that’s when I opted for the matchstick!”

The silent auction runs from Saturday 28th November to Wednesday 23rd December. The Zoo has contributed an animal adoption and family ticket to the prize. The painting is valued at £500.

Vicki Barnes, Marketing Manager, said: “We’re really happy to be involved with the exhibition and to support Annie. It’s a wonderful opportunity to showcase wildlife artwork from three top artists and to introduce a unique new talent.”

Background

Annie is Torquay born and bred. She was home-educated between the ages of twelve and sixteen, which is when she discovered sketching and painting. She then studied for one year at South Devon College:

“I found that they didn’t really teach the style of art I wanted to learn, so I completed that course - First Diploma in Art & Design - in the top three of my class in 2007 and decided to pursue a career as a self-taught artist. I sold my first pieces in a college exhibition in June 2007, and have been working ever since.”

“My ambition is to make a successful career out of doing what I love best. As an artist my aim for each painting is to pick up on detail and have it look as realistic as possible.”

Nature conservation has always been important to my family. Growing up in a rural area like Devon you can’t help but want to conserve your natural surroundings. As an artist, all my inspiration comes from nature, particularly animals.

“The tool I use is actually a piece of hardwood roughly 5 mm square - it’s the same shape as a match stick, but a bit bigger. As far as I know, no other artist is using this technique.” Annie spent a year experimenting and developing the technique. She has also taught herself to paint wildlife in a more traditional style, using oils.

“The result is similar to a pixelated photograph, so I call it my pixelation technique. It’s a little like pointillism but that’s purely accidental, I was really only thinking about mosaics! The dots of colour are built up exactly like in a printed photograph, but they are bigger and more varied, which gives a less uniform look.

“Silverback is the biggest painting I’ve ever produced. It took about two weeks of actual painting, plus five days of preparation. I always work from a photograph - it takes a while to find the right photo, work out composition, decide what size canvas and then make the canvas.”

Haddon Galleries is Torbay’s leading independent art gallery, picture framers and fine art publishers. A Brush With The Wild opens on Saturday 28th November and runs until Wednesday 23rd December.

Paignton Zoo Environmental Park is a registered charity. For more information go to www.paigntonzoo.org.uk or ring (01803) 697500.

To view Paignton Zoo's web page on Zoo and Aquarium Visitor, go to:  http://www.zandavisitor.com/forumtopicdetail-783-Paignton_Zoo_Environmental_Park