Anne Corless works in the creative arts as an artist and illustrator, designer and art educator.  With a love of the natural world Anne’s studio is full of drawings and paintings of people, animals and landscapes, created in a variety of media from delicate pencil drawings, charcoal studies and intricate watercolours to vast oil paintings. Born in the UK, Anne spent her youth living around the world; in Nigeria, Australia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia and South Africa before settling with Bob, her Lancastrian husband and their young family in Lancashire. Anne writes: “Living overseas for so many years gave me the opportunity to see some truly wonderful sights of the natural world. I have watched herds of elephant crashing through the undergrowth in the magnificent Aberdare Mountains in Kenya and I have sat quietly on a small clifftop in Tsavo National Park whilst a retired park ranger quietly talked about the wildlife at the nearby waterhole. I have stood on pristine beaches in Australia with hardly another person in sight and I have snorkeled in the Red Sea over a coral reef of magical shapes and colours with a drop into the ocean so deep and sudden at its edge that I was afraid to swim over it.”

In recent years Anne has spent more time travelling and enjoys teaching on art holidays and as an art instructor on cruise ships. On one trip Anne and Bob visited the remote Gjesvaerstappen Nature Reserve, situated off the coast of Norway in the Arctic Circle, famous for its bird life, including the one million puffins that arrive each year. Anne says: “It was as if thousands of little puffins escorted our small boat as they flew alongside, perilously close to the waves.

Anne writes about another experience on her travels:
" As for experiencing wildlife in its natural habitat, if sailing across the North Atlantic searching for whales and enjoying the sight of sea birds was the introduction, then the welcome to Iceland for me was sighting of a single arctic tern.  From our vantage point on land, we watched the bird fly high and low, expertly balancing a fish in its beak while negotiating the undulations of a cliff edge in a relentless wind.  Perhaps it had been blown off-course on to the lava covered Reyjanes Peninsula as it made its way back to a nest on Eldey Island, a high, sheer sided rock offshore, or maybe the nest was on the cliffs close by.  In the cold wind that nearly knocked us off our feet, we were once again reminded of the wonders of the natural world.  We had spent three days at sea, all the while looking forward to being back on land.  The Arctic Tern, we discovered, is pelagic, living at sea all year round and only visiting land to nest every one to three years."
- From an article 'A North Atlantic art odyssey' which featured in the January 2020 issue of Art + Framing Today magazine, UK .

Anne records these ‘creative’ journeys with her ​artwork, ​photography and writing. “I hope that by creating images of the natural world I may remind people of the importance of protecting it….for all our sakes.”

Follow Anne on:
www.annecorless.com