Peggy Watkins was the 2008 SEWE Featured Artist of the Year. Her respect for the natural world and animals exhibits itself in her elegant representational images of wildlife and sporting dogs. Peggy has a signature style which she describes as “painterly”. Art is a language…a way of articulating an idea or event without words. I want to boil complex subject matter down to the essential most poignant elements. A painting needs to incorporate not only the subject that inspired the work but also an excitement that supports it by way of color and brushwork. The point is to make a succinct and exciting statement about the subject. In this manner I hope I am communicating my idea and striking a chord in others. Peggy spends a great deal of time in the field observing and photographing hunting dogs and wildlife. Living close to the best quail country in the US she has found a great fondness for painting bird dogs and has come to the conclusion that the way a great dog works and points the birds is an art form in its own right. She and her husband, Todd, also spend time in Africa each year at their private residence in the wild bush country of Zambia. In 2006 she won the Wildlife Art Magazine Publishers Award as well as an Award of Merit at the “Artists for the New Century” special exhibit held at The Bennington Center for the Arts in Vermont. Her work is included in the permanent collection of Bennington Center for the Arts, Bennington VT. Peggy's work has also been featured in several prominent magazines. Memberships include Oil Painters of America (Assoc) and Artists for Conservation (AFC).