Trigger Fish at Large

After ten years of landscape and rainforest painting, I embarked on an Australia-wide painting trip for 14 months before the ‘Grey Nomads’ dominated the roads. One of my aims was to master watercolour and develop a new genre. For five months, I travelled the coast of Western Australia, diving the reefs, collecting seaweeds and other marine life to use as stencils. The variety of marine life was truly awe-inspiring. I took advantage of inventing my own motifs of which I have artist’s licence that, I think, gave me an edge of originality for my newly found skills. I kept this painting in my own collection as an example of my underwater and Great Barrier Reef series. North Queensland’s tourist industry was just developing and thriving at the time so all 25 paintings sold very quickly. However, nearly all of them were produced at Ningaloo Reef, Shark Bay, Exmouth and along the coast of Western Australia.

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Pam Schultz is an award-winning representational fine artist. Her paintings are in the collection of national and international patrons. “My appreciation of art began at home in Melbourne, where I was fascinated by my grandmother’s oil paintings hanging on the walls. I started drawing earnestly around eight years old. I excelled at art in school and by grade 12, I was enrolled in a Diploma of Art at Caufield Institute of Technology (now Monash University). My first artistic job was a textile artist at a clothing factory in Melbourne. I designed textile patterns and took the illustrations overseas to England where I was based for three years. I travelled around Europe, West Asia and America visiting art galleries, stately homes and cathedrals. In London, I worked for an animation studio where I created illustrations for commercials. Back in Australia, I became enthralled by the tropical landscapes in North Queensland and became involved in lobbying for their protection through my art. Influenced by anthropology studies at university, I began to paint portraits in 2003. Then I began to choose people who were conservation ecologists as this theme suited my passion as one who aimed for the same goal. I worked in the field of natural resource management following the achievement of a PhD in Environmental Science. Amongst other recent commendations, I won first prize in 2019 for “The Ethnobotonist” in the competition Artists of the North in Cairns. In 2020, I received a high commendation for “Grasswren Country Laid Down” at the Cairns Regional Gallery.”