Jonathan Sainsbury RSW

Jonathan Sainsbury is a long-established British wildlife artist: an artist first and foremost, whose subject happens to be the natural world.

Jonathan has spent a lifetime observing and drawing his subjects. He is master of the fleeting moment, often using the mediums of watercolour, or watercolour combined with charcoal, to convey immediacy, a sense of movement and atmosphere.

In much of his work he draws on nature as a metaphor to say something about life itself. As he says: 'The human desire for knowledge forever drives us to ask questions. Rarely do we simply meditate on the beauty of the natural world into which we are mortally bound. Adam and Eve, in the Biblical story, fell from the Garden of Eden because they ate from the Tree of Knowledge. I prod and probe and paint, hoping to reflect something of its complexity and beauty, looking for a glimpse of Eden.'
Born in Stratford upon Avon, Warwickshire, Jonathan Sainsbury grew up with close links to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. He studied for a Pre-Diploma at Leamington Spa College of Art, before working in the Paint Shop of the Theatre and visiting Japan with the Company. He read Fine Art at Leeds College of Art, graduating in 1976 with a show that included an experimental 'man-powered flying suit', featured in Young Northern Contemporaries Exhibition, 1976.