We are excited to announce the winners of the 2020-2021 Bigleaf Magnolia Art and Garden Festival‘s online botanical art exhibit: “Flower Encounters.”
You can see all accepted entries in the online exhibit by clicking this link.
Grand Prize Winner (awarded $300 and a Family Membership to the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens):
Look for the Rainbow
36×48 inches, Oil
Natalia Leigh
About the artist:
Natalia Leigh is a contemporary realist painter who lives and works in Kannapolis North Carolina. Her distinctive personal style emanates love to the nature and optimistic attitude to life. Natalia likes to paint with oil on canvas, sometimes on black canvas. Most of her paintings look like a view from the window. As the artist explains, “I am a storyteller, I invite you to look out of the window of your soul and see how beautiful the world around is.”
Natalia was born in Europe and drew pictures from her childhood. She started to paint in oil on canvas since 1990. In 2005 she moved to USA for a better life and started to display her Art in local Art Galleries of North Carolina since 2016.
Natalia’s artwork has been shown in her solo exhibition in Mooresville Art Gallery, Yadkinville and Morganton North Carolina. She is award winner of several local art contests and shows. In December 2018 Natalia Leigh received President’s Choice award for outstanding work in the visual arts from Rowan-Cabarrus Community College. Presently Natalia works as a nurse and painting pictures in her spare time in her own studio in Kannapolis.
You can visit Natalia’s website here.
Merit Awards (awarded a Family Membership to the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens):
Sphinx Moon
17×12 inches, Discarded herbarium sample, colored pencil, watercolor
Amy Wendland
About the artist:
Amy K. Wendland received her BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design, and an MA and MFA in Graphics from University of Wisconsin, Madison. Amy worked commercially as an artist and designer, with projects ranging from book covers and advertisements to logo design and museum exhibit drawings. After a decade of freelancing, Ms. Wendland switched her focus to fine art, concentrating on mixed media works on paper and sculpture. Her artwork typically utilizes a combination of humor, offbeat materials and obsessive craft. Ms. Wendland lives in Durango, Colorado where she serves as an Associate Dean of Arts & Sciences and Professor of Art at Fort Lewis College.
You can see Amy’s website here.
Summer Prelude
21×31 inches, Soft Pastel
Toni Lindahl
About the artist:
Toni Lindahl holds a Masters Degree from New York University and has resided in North Carolina for forty-six years. Her pastels have won numerous awards in national and international juried exhibitions. She is a member of Women Artists of America, The Degas Pastel Society, a signature member of The Pastel Society of North Carolina and was awarded the title of Master Pastelist from the Pastel Society of America. She has been included in Who’s Who in American Art and her work has been published in The Best of Pastels, Portrait Inspirations, and Floral Inspirations by Rockport Publishers. Her work was featured in Pratique Des Arts in France. Her paintings are in numerous private and corporate collections including Glaxo, R.J.R. Tobacco, Steelcase, Sheraton and Hilton Hotels, Lowe’s Companies, and Duke University.
You can see Toni’s website here.