Nellie Pease
Artist and Scientific Illustrator
About the artist
Nellie Pease creates scientific illustrations for journal publications and science communication and outreach projects. She specialises in natural history illustration, and palaeontological reconstructions of extinct fauna and ecosystems.
Seashell Turtle - Watercolour Biomosaic
This work is part of my Biomosaic series, in which I draw & paint Australian native animals using the flora from the ecosystems around them. I painted this one while staying at Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), and everything in it is a creature I found when I was poking around the rockpools one afternoon at Frenchman's beach. As kids, we once found the skeleton of a huge green sea turtle washed up on the same headland, and I've always loved that spot for being a little jungle of rock-critters and weird ocean flotsam. I wanted this artwork to tie all of those things together - the big, charismatic species we all know and get excited to see, with the mosaic of smaller, weirder, infinitely diverse critters that keep their ecosystems ticking along. I hope looking at this artwork feels the way picking through rockpools does - full of cool little treasures hidden away in unlikely crevices, all forming a complex, living whole when you step back.
BUY
Kangaroo Island Dunnart Ink & Watercolour
This artwork was painted during the 2019-2020 Australian bushfires, an unprecedented season of disaster that affected almost an entire continent's worth of people and ecosystems. It shows a Kangaroo Island dunnart, one of the many quiet victims of these fires - there were barely 300 remaining before Kangaroo Island burned, and with 2/3 of their ecosystem destroyed and the unburned rest still threatened by feral cats, it seemed like this species might be one of the first extinctions of the new decade. At the time, I felt like the only thing I could do was mourn the loss by drawing it. Most Australians don't know what a dunnart is, and I created this because I wanted people to see it and understand what was lost. As it turned out, there's hope for the KI dunnarts yet. A few have been spotted on camera traps around the island, and are being carefully fenced off from feral cats by dedicated researchers and volunteers. I feel much more hopeful about this artwork now, and I hope it can do some good of its own: 100% of the proceeds from this sale will go to FAME (Foundation for Australia's Most Endangered Species), to assist in their project to monitor and protect the surviving KI dunnarts, control feral predators, and revegetate Kangaroo Island.
BUY
Celestial Whale Watercolour
This humpback whale swims through the sky, floating in a watercolour galaxy peppered with golden stars. This is a high-quality reproduction of a watercolour and gold gouache original painting, printed on 320gsm textured cotton rag. Various sizes are available, and I can also arrange custom sizes, shapes and margin widths upon request via DM. This painting would look great in a gold or wooden frame, either by itself or paired with other paintings from this series. If you'd like to give this item as a gift, I can arrange high-quality framing upon request (though this will require longer processing time and a higher price).
BUY
Watercolour Tawny Frogmouth
This painting features a tawny frogmouth (Podargus strixoides), an Australian native bird of prey, master of camouflage and (in my informed opinion) the coolest almost-owl-but-not-quite you'll found in your suburban backyard. This artwork is a high-quality reproduction of an original watercolour painting, printed on 320gsm textured cotton rag. Various sizes are available, and I can also arrange custom sizes, shapes and margin widths upon request via DM. This painting would look great in a coloured or wooden frame. If you'd like to give this item as a gift, I can arrange high-quality framing upon request (though this will require longer processing time and a higher price).
BUYArtwork as seen in
