Born in Washington State into a Navy family, Peggy Watkins began drawing animals at a young age. Numerous moves across the United States as well as Asia allowed her to live in many different environments. She originally pursued a business career all the while keeping her drawing skills sharp after work. Peggy is self-taught in the mediums of graphite and colored pencil and ultimately attended the Atlanta College of Art to study oil painting, which she now uses exclusively. Her main artistic influences are not necessarily animal or strict landscape painters but great masters such as John Singer Sargent and Joquin Sorolla. She began exhibiting and selling her work in 2003 and was chosen to be the featured artist at the 2008 Southeastern Wildlife Exposition. In 2020, she was selected to be a judge for the 2020-2021 Federal Duck Contest. Peggy has a signature style that she describes as impressionistic realism. She strives to capture the expression and essence of her subject while using bold color and strong brushwork to create a lasting impact on the imagination. “I want the viewer to lose themselves in the scene and never tire of viewing it.” She also tries to capture motion when possible. “Everything always has a ‘hum’ going on even if standing perfectly still”. Her elegant representational oil paintings of animals and habitat can be found in collections across the country and in numerous periodicals, including the cover of Gray’s Sporting Journal. Her work is inspired by spending a great deal of time in the outdoors in and around the low country, her extensive travel across the United States and abroad to the world’s greatest wing shooting paradises, as well as wild places such as Yellowstone, Alaska, Scotland and Africa. She and her husband, Todd, live on their farm in Yemassee, South Carolina, which is surrounded by old rice fields that are managed for ducks and other wetland wildlife. They enjoy hunting and riding their Marsh Tacky horses. Sporting art is frequently featured in Peggy’s work. The interest began in 2003 when she was invited to a plantation in south Georgia to observe the finer points of quail hunting. Amazed at the intelligence and intensity of the bird dogs in action she decided that was something she wanted to capture. Since that first visit, she has spent a great deal of time following dogs in the United States and Scotland. Holland & Holland, maker of fine sporting guns, has selected Peggy's sporting and wildlife work to include in their Dallas and London gunrooms. In 2017, Peggy, with the help of the Kiawah Sporting Club, gave rise to the Charleston Annie Oakley Shooters. An informal group of women get together to shoot sporting clays on the second Tuesday of each month for fellowship and enhancement of women’s knowledge and skill of the shooting arts.
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