Karen Laurence-Rowe

Winner Wildlife Artist of the Year 2012

Recipient of the AFC Simon Combes Conservation Artist Award 2015

David Shepherd Personal Choice award 2017

Karen Laurence-Rowe was born in Uganda, daughter to a civil engineer, her family lived almost a nomadic existence, moving around East Africa to wherever a road or a bridge was needed.  Home, in those early years was often a prefab wooden site house with lions and hyenas breaking the sounds of the night and constant attacks on the chicken house by various beasts!  With no towns or cities around for hundreds of miles, Karen and her siblings would draw to entertain themselves. These memories of Africa’s virtually unspoiled landscapes, teeming with game and magnificent views, were to influence her subject matter as an artist in later years.

Although Karen Laurence-Rowe is most well known for painting African Wildlife – She is just as interested in capturing the landscapes, seascapes and the people of the country she is in.  She is extremely versatile in medium and style and can switch easily from oils into watercolors or charcoal.

Karen’s paintings grace the walls of many an art lover both in Kenya , where she lives, and in homes all over the world. 

She paints from her Studio in Nairobi which enables her to get into the field regularly to sketch and photograph the wildernesses that she so loves.   Karen’s concern for what it happening to the wildlife and the wildscapes around her is reflected deeply in her work.   She regularly donates to conservation.

“Never Before has it been so important to capture the creatures of this planet that are disappearing before our very eyes!  I am deeply concerned about the rapid slide to extinction that so many animals across the planet are facing – With the dust of Africa ingrained in my brush and ingrained in my blood, I am compelled to capture its precious remnants…. before mankind has destroyed it all!”