Kim Atkinson b.1962

 

Kim Atkinson was born in Bath in 1962.  Following her BA in Fine Art at Cheltenham School of Art she went on to study for an MA in Natural History Illustration at the Royal College of Art, London.  Her early childhood was spent living on Bardsey Island where her parents farmed.  She now lives with her husband and her son on the Lleyn Peninsula.

Her subjects, mainly birds, insects and plants within the landscape context, are assimilated by way of observational drawings and notes made outside, in and near her garden, or on cliffs and coves of the headland.  The intimate world of nature in a hedgerow or groupings of birds interacting on the shore, for example, form the beginnings of ideas for pictures.

Some subjects are developed in the studio, where various printmaking techniques are often combined to make limited edition prints or monoprints, where layers of oil-based inks are printed off perspex sheets to build a surface rich in pattern and texture to find an equivalent which seeks to celebrate an encounter with nature.

She has been a member of Society of Wildlife Artists since 1992.  In 1992 she joined her first project with Artists for Nature Foundation (ANF) to Biebrza in Poland, and has subsequently taken part in many of their visits to highlight threatened habitats, such as the Tumbesian Forest in Peru, Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, India, and the Loire Estuary in France.