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Land of the Thunder Dragon Exhibition
In June 2008 Pollyanna was proud to open her private gallery
for the first major exhibition of over fifty paintings inspired
by five weeks trekking and camping in the remote Himalayan kingdom
of Bhutan, one of the world's last true wilderness environments.
Visitors to Pollyanna's private gallery in Derbyshire were
the very first to have the opportunity to see the new collection
of work and were also able to see a selection of artefacts brought
back from the expedition, as well as some of Pollyanna’s
working sketches.A corner of the gallery (above) was transformed
into a Bhutanese temple for the duration of the exhibition complete
with prayer flags, traditional Bhuddist wall hangings and burning
incense.
In the spring of 2007, Pollyanna spent five weeks trekking
and camping in the remote Himalayan kingdom, one of the world's
last true wilderness environments. Bhutan jealously guards its
lifestyle and ancient traditions, and this series of paintings
is the first to comprehensively document the wildlife and habitat.
Pollyanna was granted a fellowship from Canada based society
Artists for Conservation (formerly the Worldwide Nature Artists
Group) in support of the expedition. Pollyanna was the first
woman ever to be granted a fellowship by the group – and
the first artist to be selected from outside Canada or North
America. Pollyanna acted as an ambassador for AFC throughout
the journey, and carried their expedition flag. She was accompanied
on the journey by her daughter and business partner Anna-Louise,
an accomplished wildlife photographer
Wildlife depicted in this collection of paintings includes
tigers, snow leopards, wolves, red pandas as well as some of
the wildlife unique to this region – golden langur monkeys,
black necked cranes and clouded leopards.
The use of gold leaf and Bhutanese lettering and traditional
symbols in ‘Golden Mountains’ (above) and many of
the other paintings in the exhibition were also inspired by
Pollyanna’s visits to the beautifully and ornately decorated
temples and monasteries of Bhutan. We are delighted that Pollyanna’s
publishers have selected this painting of tigers to produce
as the first ever greeting card to be sold on behalf of the
Pollyanna Pickering Foundation.
Two new limited edition prints were also launched during the
event, which was Pollyanna’s most successful ever summer
exhibition.
A selection of the paintings subsequently went on to be exhibited
in the Artists for Conservation exhibition at the Hiram Blauvelt
Art Museum in New York in September 2008 to highlight their
flag expedition programme. Pollyanna attended the gala opening
weekend to speak about the journey. A further series of exhibitions
in British galleries will be announced in the coming months.
The expedition has already attracted much media attention internationally
– with articles appearing in a variety of publications
from Nepal’s most popular national newspaper Kantipur
to Toronto University’s in house magazine The Medium.
Britain’s only Wildlife Art magazine, Wildscape published
an article about the journey in their June 2008 issue, which
was illustrated with a selection of the new paintings inspired
by the journey. Wildscape have recently announced their new
role as UK sponsors of the AFC, and this special issue was dedicated
to the society, with copies being handed out throughout the
New York exhibition, in addition to distribution through their
usual outlets. The Artists for Conservation Foundation have
also chosen Pollyanna’s exhibition to Bhutan to feature
in their recent series of International advertisements promoting
the organisation and explaining their recent name change from
the Worldwide Nature Artists Group.
The Foundation have published Pollyanna’s Bhutanese journal
as a limited edition book – Click
here for full details
Click here to learn more about the
expedition
Click here
to view the online journal of Pollyanna's expedition
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