20 January 2012

Nepal trip for DJCAD student Madeline

(Images show Madeline, along with her competition entries.)

A fourth-year Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art (DJCAD) student has won a £2000 trip to Nepal and the opportunity to produce work inspired by one of the world's most spectacular areas of natural beauty.

Madeline Mackay will visit the Himalayan nation's Pipar Reserve from 25th March-6th April after winning the Timothy Greenwood Young Wildlife Artist Award. The 22-year-old, originally from Caithness, won the prize after impressing judges with two examples of her work - an etching of a cormorant and a lithographic print of an egret.

The competition is organised by the World Pheasant Award (WPA), a charity aiming to conserve Galliformes, the group of birds which is most important to humans and which includes pheasant, partridge, and grouse, and their habitat through research, training, capacity building and conservation management.

The majority of Madeline's work focuses on bird imagery, and she has previously volunteered with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). As such, she managed to capture her subjects in fine detail and with such character that her drawings stood out from the competition

The two-week trek will allow Madeline take in the stunning mountains and forests of Pipar. She will visit local schools and communities, and witness the WPA's conservation work in the region as well as working on her art.

The dramatic sweeping views, green valley forests, and vibrantly coloured and rare species will help inspire Madeline, and the work she carries out may feature in her Degree Show exhibit, which will be unveiled just five weeks after she returns from Nepal.

'It's a great feeling to have my prints picked as the winning selection, and I'm very excited about the trip,' she said. 'It will be an amazing experience and will hopefully generate lots of new ideas for artwork'.

'I'm really looking forward to going to Nepal. It's not somewhere I ever thought I would visit so it's a great chance to see somewhere completely different and the whole trip sounds amazing.

'As I'll be getting things together for my final project for the Degree Show it comes at the most hectic time possible! The trip will be a fantastic experience though, and it will definitely help my work.

'This is the first competition I've entered since I was 16 so it's great to be recognised in this way. One of my tutors encouraged me to enter as many competitions as possible for the experience and this prize will look great on my CV.

'Nature has always played a part in my work, which I think comes from where I grew up. Near to where I lived, there was a really bleak landscape which influenced my work and over the past couple of years I've started to study birds more and began drawing them.

'I think this was because, coming from the north, birds are an integral part of a landscape that's very familiar to me, which is why I see them as representing it. They were a big part of my awareness growing up, and birds have come to be a way of expressing this place for me.'

The prize is named in honour of Timothy Greenwood, a talented wildlife artist who died in 2010 and who was a founder member of the WPA.

Pipar is situated 3-3500m-high in the Annapurna region of the Nepalese Himalayas. The Reserve is particularly rich in Galliformes, and contained five of Nepal's six Himalayan pheasant species.

The project aims to protect the unspoilt forests of Pipar, and the pheasants that live in and above them. In addition, support is given to nine schools nearby Pipar. This has enabled these schools to build more classrooms, employ more teachers and invest in teaching materials for the children.

The fund is also used to increase the environmental awareness of the local people and to discourage the local hunters or 'shikaris' from trapping or shooting pheasants in the area. WPA has been monitoring the health of the Pipar forest and its Galliformes since 1979.

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