Brenda Holden

Wildlife Artist

Brenda Holden
Wildlife artist

Born in Adelaide but now living in Goolwa S.A. with my husband, dog Tippy and Ossie, my hand raised Eastern Rosella. I studied Art and Graphic Design in the early eighties but after many years doing ads for newspapers finally decided to paint what I truly loved, birds. I tried my hand at many forms of art, seascapes, landscapes, still life, even 3D, but having grown up surrounded by birds (my father had aviaries), I kept going back to what I knew and loved most. I started painting in watercolour and gouache but was never really happy with the intensity of colour, I tried using oils but found that my style of painting (layers upon layers) took too long to dry, plus I couldn’t stand the smell and the mess. I discovered Acrylics in about 2000 and after 18 months of trial and error and getting used to different colours I thought I had finally found my medium, some of my paintings can take weeks or even months to complete.

I’ve lived in country W.A. and Broken Hill and my husband and I love to travel as much as possible. I need to get out and about, it inspires me, I take my camera everywhere and now have thousands of photos. Zoos, wildlife parks and national parks are all favourites; I can spend hours studying a subject. I photograph not only birds and animals but also old fence posts, wire, weeds, even cobwebs, they all end up in paintings at some stage.

Art has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, but wildlife art is a passion and something that I have to do every day. The study and training I did as a Graphic Designer made it possible for me to express my passion for birds and wildlife in a way that lets me paint them in a realistic and natural way. Colour, shape, anatomy and design are all integral to producing a painting that gives life to my work.