Read this Wildlife Art Journal article

Stella Mays in her studio

By Wildlife Art Journal

Whenever younger artists come along that dare to paint differently, people take notice.  We’ve profiled several such artists at Wildlife Art Journal. In the case of Stella Mays, the British artist who portrays charmismatic game species in pastel, its fortunate indeed that those paying attention were judges with the annual BBC Wildlife Artist of the Year competition. Mays’ dramatic depiction of Amur tigers stalking through timber claimed the top overall prize in the 2011 contest.

For North American art collectors who may be unfamiliar with her work, there are several things that set it apart.  Mays grew up smitten with the pastoral English countryside—as she says, adoring of horses and natural phenomena innate to the valleys of Yorkshire.  “My first visit to a gallery hoping to sell my work (at about 16),” she told Wildscape magazine, “ended unsurprisingly in failure.  However it did introduce me to the work of pastel artist Peter Jepson whose big cat paintings absolutely enthralled me.”

One must admire Mays’ pluck. Born in London in 1973, she’s a working mother searching for that point of professional versus personal equilibrium, and earlier served as a teacher.  “A few years spent putting an Ecology degree to excellent use teaching ‘balanced science’ to unbalanced teenagers convinced me to work hard at my first passion and try to become a professional artist,” she says.

Indeed, the challenge of any teacher—or self taught artist or...