Thursday, November 14, 2013

Back by Popular Demand!

Carl Brenders
Carl Brenders

We are very excited to announce that our popular Window on Wildlife calendar is back by popular demand for 2015.  The wall calendar will feature extremely realistic images of wildlife depicted in their habitats created by famous naturalist and painter Carl Brenders, internationally acclaimed as one of the greatest Nature painters of all time.

Carl was born in 1937 near Antwerp where he still lives with his wife, Paula. He started drawing at a very early age and trained at the Fine Art Academy and later in Berchem and began his career as an illustrator of children’s books on natural history. For long revered and collected by admirers around the world, in September 2002 he was deservedly honoured by the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wisconsin, USA, as their Master Wildlife Artist, describing it as ‘the high point of my career’. He was also conferred the titles of Featured Artist and Guest Artist from the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition in Charleston, SC, the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, WY and Bennington Center for the Arts, VT.  Carl Brenders’ paintings are present in prestigious permanent collections such as The Ford Collection in Dearborn, MI and those of the Woodson Art Museum and the National Museum of Wildlife Art.  In 1998 he was inducted into the U.S. Art Hall of Fame.  Outside the United States, his paintings received a lot of attention at major art auctions such as Christie’s, UK, Bonham’s in Singapore and Mondiale, LTD in Hong Kong.  The high point of Carl’s career was a retrospective exhibition of 30 of his works entitled “Artistry in Nature: The Wildlife Paintings of Carl Brenders” which opened in 1997 at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History before traveling to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Cleveland OH, the Bernheim Museum & Arboretum in Louisville, KY and the Norton Art  Gallery in Shreveport, LA.
2015 Window on Wildlife Wall Calendar

Carl’s process includes taking countless photos of the animal and its habitat, taking great care to document all of the elements that will set the stage for his subject such as the vegetation at a particular time of year, the light, the relief of the landscape, the shape and colour of the rocks. Only then will Carl let his imagination kick in by drawing a few sketches. His vision finally materializes in a detailed pencil drawing which he then projects to his illustration board making adjustments to his composition before applying colour. His paintings are typically created on illustration board and is executed in a mixed-media combination of watercolour and gouache.

On the left is a sneak peak of Carl's 2015 Wall Calendar, Window on Wildlife. Are you excited yet?