As a Wildlife Artist Natalie's work is stunning....and very collectible and the prices will continue to go up from here. They have averaged an annual increase of at least 25%. At such a young age Natalie Parker already has four of her paintings selected to go into Open Edition Prints, four more in Limited Edition prints and others have been used to produce Limited Edition Plates which have been distributed around Australia.

Her work has already been described by great artists like Kevin Best as some of the finest native wildlife studies that you will find in the country. This means that Natalie's career is already looking very rosy and purchase of her work now means that you will be in on the ground floor of someone who could well become Australia's most collectible native wildlife artist.

Because Natalie's work is so time consuming she can only paint a maximum of 37 paintings in an entire year. This means that as demand for her work increases the waiting list will grow longer so people will start to offer higher prices to come down the list. Natalie's real love is painting small animals, native to Australia. She has enjoyed drawing and painting for her entire life and completed her Associate Diploma of Fine Arts at Newcastle School of Art & Design in 1991. She was born on 16th April 1971 and is a young artist with a bright future.

Natalie lives in the Picturesque Hunter Valley with her husband Paul. Almost by accident Natalie began painting some of her wildlife studies onto wood veneer. She spent some time helping her father build kitchens and rather than discard the left-over pieces of Tasmanian Oak and Red Cedar veneer, she began to paint onto them. The variations of colour and texture in the veneer gave a perfect background for her wildlife subjects. Because the veneer was just 2mm thick, the paintings were able to be framed in the traditional way with border matts and glass to protect this unique artwork.

One of the mediums Natalie uses to do her paintings in "Gouache (pronounced gwarsh) and Watercolour". Gouache is an opaque paint to which you add water to thin it down. It has a chalky texture. Because it is not transparent like watercolour you can get more definite lines in the painting. The gouache can be used with watercolour to make objects stand out from the background, eg leaves and animals. The fur of a Bilby, for example, has bright white areas on the tail and chest. If you tried to paint a white watercolour over a dark background you'd get a muddy colour, but gouache is thick enough to cover the background.

Natalie then goes over the gouache with watercolour to create richer colours and highlight the painting. An airbrush is occasionally used to get a smooth background, or it can be directed in a fine line to achieve a stippled effect - like sandy dirt. Other painting techniques she uses include sponging to get realistic rocks and soil, and fine brush work for the animals and leaves. More recently Natalie has been painting almost exclusively with acrylic paint on both paper and board. She does not mix the acrylic paint with water or thinners. It is a type of "plastic" paint. Before starting a painting, Natalie draws a number of drafts, substituting logs, posts, branches, positions of subject etc until the right composition is found. Maybe 5 drawings?

In some drafts Natalie will colour in with coloured pencils to give an idea where her colours will go. She does a written summary of the painting techniques. When working out a final composition, Natalie draws a sketch of the background and basic forms (eg a barn and beams) on a piece of paper the same size as the painting is to be. She then draws the possums who will sit on the beams and other dominant features of the painting, on a separate piece of paper and cuts them out to make a stencil. She shuffles the stencils all over the drawing to find just the right position.

Natalie will then paint in the whole of the board or paper to create a distant out of focus effect. This effect will in turn highlight the subjects in the painting when it is finished. When dry she will then start to paint from the background to the foreground. If there are trees or bushes in the background these are then painted in with white, then green, then paint over, perhaps in black, to make them recede into the distance. This is done in varying degrees until she gets to the foreground. She will then go back and begin to fill in the features of the painting - once again working from the back to the front. Every item is painted with white over the top of previous work, eg the background in a barn.

This is then painted in colour and maybe brushed. Over the top of that she will paint the foreground of the barn, in white and then colour. Over that she might paint leaves and bushes draping over the barn. Then there'll be leaves over the top of leaves - all done in white and then colour. Over that she will paint her main subject - the possums. Then the smaller touches are added with perhaps a piece of wire, spiders web or some ants. Great depth is achieved this way and you look right into the painting. Only a talented artist like Natalie, can achieve this effect.

By using acrylic paint Natalie has greater freedom to get her subjects exact. Unlike watercolours, with acrylics if she spills paint on a part of the painting that is finished or wants to change it, it's easy to just wipe off if the paint is still soft. Or she can paint over any part of the painting. She sometimes applies lacquer to certain spots of the painting to highlight them. Natalie takes time to go into the bush to take photographs of the animals she paints, backed up by wildlife reference books. The Native Animal Trust look after a range of injured or orphaned animals. They allow Natalie to photograph some of these animals for her work

On most occasions it is difficult to get close photographs of some animals in the wild or at Wildlife Parks. On her frequent field trips she collects interesting pieces of wood, rocks, fence posts, insects, native grasses, and nuts and has them in her studio to get the details exact. She even has jars of dirt gathered from various areas along with photographs of native animals in the wild. Natalie has painted many endangered species and hopes to raise awareness of the plight of some of our Australian animals. Her sensitivity for these animals shines through in her paintings. You will see how Natalie sets the native animals and frogs in natural surroundings making them look real. Great depth is achieved this way and you look right into the painting.

Only a talented artist like Natalie can achieve this effect.