Winning artist goes underwater to paint seahorses

Dorset’s seahorses are to be immortalised in art.  Fine artist Esther Tyson has been announced as the winner of the Undersea Wildlife Art Award from Dorset Wildlife Trust in association with The Society of Wildlife Artists (SWLA).  The award, established in 2007, provides a bursary for an established artist to learn to dive and then to work underwater off the Dorset coast, recording the wildlife of the sea in art.   

Esther, who is based in Derbyshire and studied at the University of Wales and the Royal College of Art, applied for the award after reading about Studland’s colony of spiny and short-snouted seahorses.  An accomplished artist who achieves remarkable images with an economy of masterful brushstrokes, her work was selected for the cover of the SWLA’s catalogue and poster for its annual exhibition this year.

Rare seagrass habitat

Esther said: “I intend to produce a body of work that reflects and represents my personal observations and opinions based on this rare seagrass meadow habitat and the weird and wonderful creatures that make it home. With hope, my work, giving a personal sense of this wonderful place, will help in raising awareness of the importance of this habitat.”

Letting everyone see underwater wildlife

The award was conceived by Dorset Wildlife Trust’s Living Seas Manager, Peter Tinsley, to bring the underwater world of Dorset’s seas to wider attention, allowing more people to see its beauties and so raising awareness of the need to protect it.  He said: “Few people can witness underwater wildlife first-hand and we depend on those that do to tell us about it ­ in stories and pictures.  Esther will be spending a lot of time studying Studland’s seagrass meadows and her resulting work will bring alive a rare and inaccessible habitat, creating a unique portrait of a world that few will see directly.  It will help people connect to something that is as much part of Dorset’s natural heritage as the visible landscape, but that has always seemed remote.

Esther will come to Dorset in spring 2011 to be trained in scuba diving and then to start work underwater in Studland Bay, with help from Dorset Wildlife Trust marine staff.  The finished work will be exhibited in Dorset and in the SWLA’s annual exhibition in London next year.

Esther's house sparrow painting graced the cover of the SWLA exhibition brochure this year

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Notes to Editor

For more information please contact Peter Tinsley at Dorset Wildlife Trust on 01305 264620.
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