Where Art Meets the Wild

Some artists discover their calling slowly, in quiet increments over time. Others know it instinctively, long before words can describe what they feel. South Carolina sporting artist Peggy Watkins belongs to the latter group. As a child, she drew animals with a care that suggested she was trying to portray a world larger than her own. “Drawing an animal brought it into the room with me,” she says. From the very beginning, her instinct revealed a path in which art and the rhythms of nature are inseparable—one she has pursued professionally for nearly twenty-five years.

Watkins’ path to full-time artistry wasn’t linear—she was an accountant at first, a brief interlude that couldn’t lessen the pull of her lifelong passions. Even then, her sketches hinted at the career she was destined to follow, capturing sporting life, the animals she loved and the landscapes that sustain them.

The turning point came at an art show in Moultrie, Georgia, when dog and quail plantation owner, Richard Thomas, paused at one of her bird dog paintings. “He told me that if I wanted to paint this regal subject, I needed to learn everything about it,” Watkins recalls. She began visiting his plantation, photographing and observing the dogs and quail habitats. “The first time I saw one of his setters point a quail, I was hooked,” she adds. That immersion shaped both her understanding of the field and the authenticity of her art.

When she and her husband moved to Atlanta, they settled across from the High Museum of Art. Watkins took evening oil painting courses at the Atlanta College of Art, where instructor Christopher Meadows introduced her to the expressive realism of painters like John Singer Sargent and Joaquín Sorolla. Combined with her self-taught drawing foundation, this guidance helped refine the style she is now known for: classic in sensibility, emotive in atmosphere and grounded in the lived experience of her subjects.

Her introduction to Charleston’s Southeastern Wildlife Exposition (SEWE) marked another turning point. In 2008, she was selected as the show’s featured artist, establishing deep and lasting ties within the Charleston community. “SEWE has been huge for me,” she says. “The SEWE folks have become dear and longtime friends. I’ve met countless like-minded people through it.” She later relocated to Beaufort County, bringing her closer to the landscapes that inspire her work. These connections—and her relationships with collectors and fellow artists at the Sportsman’s Gallery—have carried her across quail fields in southern Georgia and on photographic safaris in the American West, experiences that continue to inform the authenticity of her paintings.

With each new composition, Watkins hones her mastery of color, light and atmosphere, capturing the subtle qualities of her subjects—the alertness of a hunting dog, the quiet tension of a quail in cover, the mood of a marsh at dawn. Even as she explores new motifs, including the horses on her Beaufort County property, the balance between observation and experience remains constant, giving her work an intimacy that resonates deeply. Watkins’ conservation philosophy is inseparable from her artistry. Support for local and international initiatives reflects her belief that creation and protection are intertwined.

“By painting nature and animals, it sends out a vibration that says we always need to honor them,” she explains. Viewers gain not only an appreciation for the beauty of her subjects but also a sense of responsibility for the lands and lives they represent. In every brushstroke, Watkins offers both artistry and advocacy. Her personal life reflects that ethos: she supports numerous conservation groups and maintains a conservation easement on her property in Yemassee, South Carolina.

Her membership with nonprofit organization Artists for Conservation offers camaraderie among creators who share her devotion to the natural world. “Each artist has their own approach,” she explains of the association, “but the subject matter is all about nature and animals. There is comfort and inspiration in being around people who share your passions.” That sense of shared purpose affirms her place in a larger movement where creativity and conservation are part of the same instinctive impulse.

Across the many phases of her career, Watkins has stayed rooted in the same foundation. “Art is my bedrock,” she says simply. “It is my offering to the world from my truest self.” That grounding—shaped by instinct, wilderness and years of firsthand experience—reveals how naturally her dual callings inform one another. The question of whether she is an artist or a conservationist ultimately resolves into the fuller truth: she is, and has long been, both. It is in that intersection that her work finds its force: where art meets the wild.