About
the Artist:
Fiona
Lumsden was born in 1959 in Sydney, NSW, but has lived in the upper
Blue Mountains, 100kms to the west, since early childhood.
Fiona has a keen interest in birdwatching and other nature study and a
great love for the Australian bush and wild places. This has led to her
specializing in bird painting and other flora and fauna subjects.
The artist has been painting Australian birds for over thirty years:
studying their form, habits and habitat on field trips throughout
Australia as well as in zoos, aviaries, museums and literature.
For her original paintings she uses watercolours, acrylics, pastels,
inks and pencil on 100% cotton rag watercolour paper. The
conservation-quality frames are individually designed, and usually
made, by the artist for
each artwork.
Fiona is an experienced wildlife illustrator. She has illustrated
4 books to date and provided illustrations for many publications and
organisations.
She has also worked in different mediums in other formats e.g. fabric
painting, metal-painting, murals, glass-painting etc.
She has produced many private commissions and has sold paintings
Australia-wide and internationally. She has participated in many group
exhibitions, gallery displays and window art displays. She has had 2
solo exhibitions of her paintings: at the Australian Museum, 1987, and
at
Hunters Hill, Sydney, 1998.
She is a member of the Blue Mountains Artists Connection group of
mountain artists. She has
been an exhibiting member of the Botanical Art Society of Australia and
also the Wildlife Artists Society of Australasia and has won the Thomas
Nelson Australia Award for best drawing with WASA.
A sample of framed artworks
on display.
Fiona sees her wildlife art as hopefully a link to foster greater
understanding and connection with nature and the intricate wild
ecosystems that sustain us. Conservation priorities become more urgent
as wild places shrink or increasingly are degraded. In the time she has
been
birdwatching she has seen many once common bird species be reclassified
as
Threatened and Declining: depressingly a continuing process. She is
acutely aware
that extinction is indeed forever but it often doesn't have to be that
way, the choice is ours to share the world. Whilst
hoping that education and exposure to the beauty of nature
through art, photography, literature and other media, will
stimulate increasing awareness and concern for more and more people,
direct
action is also needed. A long-time member of Birds Australia and other
conservation bodies, she still finds time between work and other
commitments to
participate in tree-planting, survey work and conservation-directed
artwork etc. but would love to do
more as time goes on.
Fiona and her partner John French have recently acquired a
bush
property in the hills behind Koorawatha, near Cowra, Central NSW. It
preserves a small parcel of now
rare Western Slopes woodland habitat and a suite of Declining or
Threatened bird species.
The property is now being networked into the Cowra Woodland Birds
Program ( Birds Australia) as one of their survey sites where data is
collected to observe trends in woodland birds and learn more of their
habitat
requirements. Incidentally they are also very much enjoying their time
getting to know a little bit of the bush intimately. Away from it
all in a rough bush shed!
Creek near Koorawatha
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