Wynona Legg

About the artist

Wynona’s practice of drawing directly from nature was nurtured by her upbringing on a dairy farm on the borders of Cornwall. Wynona gained a National Diploma in Art at Plymouth College of Art but a strong desire to work in the field of nature conservation led her to study Conservation Biology and Ecology with the University of Exeter from which she graduated in 2013. It is this connection between drawing and ecology that has shaped her drawing practice and intensified her observation of the natural world, giving her an intimate understanding of subject which in turn informs the expression of her marks.

Wynona was elected as associate member of the Society of Wildlife Artists in 2019 having been awarded the John Busby Seabird Drawing Course Bursary in 2017 and subsequently the Greg Poole Bursary in 2019 - winning the Larson-Juhl Award in the same year for her collection of field drawings made on the Isle of Fidra. Wynona regularly exhibits with the Society at their annual show, the Natural Eye, held at Mall Galleries in London. In 2020, Wynona was selected as a contributing artist for Red67, a book published by the British Trust for Ornithology to raise vital funds for conservation work aimed at saving the UK’s most at risk bird species.

Wynona works in materials that offer immediacy when drawing subjects directly from life, most often inks, graphite, charcoal and soft pastel. Drawing is at the core of her practice and often forms the finished work.

Her work in wildlife conservation continues to feed into drawing practice and drives inspiration for new projects. Currently working with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Wynona is working to monitor and protect breeding ringed plover in North Norfolk and it is through drawing that she explores a more personal, emotional response to observations and encounters in the field.