Polly Anna Pickering

Expeditions

Bhutan India China High Arctic Siberia Transylvania North America Africa Central America Britain!

Pollyanna in Transylvania

Pollyanna Pickering is passionate about wildlife and equally passionate about accurately interpreting her subjects. She is a champion of environmental conservation, both on the national and international stage, and is an indefatigable campaigner for the welfare of endangered, sick and vulnerable creatures.

Together with her daughter and business partner, Anna-Louise, who is an accomplished photographer, Pollyanna has embarked on an ongoing series of expeditions to study and sketch wildlife in their natural habitats. These trips have inspired a number of critically acclaimed exhibitions, as well as a series of highly successful talks.

Pollyanna believes that the unique quality of her work comes from the time spent studying real animals in their natural habitat. Zoos and reference books, are no substitute for experiencing the heat and dust of the Massai Mara, or the biting, vicious cold of the High Arctic. It is this dedication which brings unmistakable realism and vitality to her work.

Pollyanna’s determination to paint only animals which she has observed in their natural habitats has lead her into a remarkable and unique series of journeys into some of the most inhospitable areas of the globe. Her expeditions to study threatened species have taken her across five continents, from the jungles of India to the deserts of North America. She has painted big cats in the rain forests of Central America, and wolves in the forests of Transylvania. One of her most challenging expeditions took her to the wastelands of Siberia where she braved temperatures as low as -60 to paint the Amur Tiger. The award-winning book 'Giant Pandas and Sleeping Dragons' was inspired by Pollyanna’s most famous journey – she was the first westerner to visit a remote area of the Tibetan Borderlands of China where she worked in a clinic for rescued pandas. 'On Top of the World' tells of her expeditions into the High Arctic to paint polar wildlife, and her fourth book ‘The Eye of the Tiger’ is an account of her travels in India. In 2007 Pollyanna was granted a fellowship from Canada based society The Worldwide Nature Artists Group in support of her expedition into the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan. Pollyanna is 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. You can read Pollyanna's expedition journal online here

In 2007 Pollyanna celebrated twentyone years of these expeditions with a special exhibition Wonderful World, which included the 'Living Planet' triptych (below) - the panels open to reveal over eighty birds and animals from aroud the globe.

To read more about some of her expeditions, click on the links below.

Where Next? ..... the question we are most often asked! Pollyanna has been approached by a production company commissioned to produce a series of six travel and wildlife documentaries for the National Geographic channel. She is currently in negotiations about making six expeditions accompanied by their film crew.