Akvile's roots as a wildlife artist began with exposure through several generations of professional artists in her family: her mother (a professional textile designer and artist) and grandfather (a professional designer and maker of furniture and wooden sculptures). From an early age, Akvile specialized in realistic wildlife paintings and portait paintings. A classical training together with an ability to see the life in her surroundings allows Akvile's realistic, acrylic nature paintings to have a dynamic feeling, capturing the inner soul of the people and animals she paints.

Each wildlife painting that Akvile creates requires many hours of research together with 100s of photographs of suitable background scenes. Akvile is meticulous about being as accurate as possible with the details of the animal or bird that she is painting and with the surroundings in which it is portrayed. Akvile's paintings are not reproductions of photographs, but compositions based on the natural behaviour of the subject in its natural habitat. Akvile's philosophy when painting wildlife is that the painting should hint at a story, action in progress, where we gain a transitory glimpse into the life of animal and are left wondering what happens next; like a good book we don't want to stop looking.

Commissioned Paintings

Initially, much of Akvile's work was self-inspired, however, in recent times Akvile is doing increasingly more commissioned painting. Akvile is involved with furniture design and portrait painting, as well as landscape/wildlife painting. The first two are the focus of another web site. Commissioned landscape/wildlife paintings often arise from customers looking for a unique and customized gift for someone that is outdoors or nature loving. Often there is a setting that has a particular association (for example your house) and an animal or bird with which there is a special connection. For practical reasons, given the international nature of her clients, Akvile usually works from photographs supplied by the customer. Ideally a number of photographs can be sent that capture the setting from different angles and in different lighting conditions. It is unusual that one photo is reproduced exaclty, but rather a range of photos captures the atmosphere which becomes the objective of the wildlife painting. The focus of the painting, the animal or bird, does not need to be captured in the same setting as is wished for the painting; in fact it is often not necessary to supply Akvile with photos of the subect itself, since her own research can often turn up suitable material.

To have Akvile do a commissioned wildlife painting for you, then of course, email Akvile with your ideas. At an early stage you will be asked to send some suitable photos and based on these and your descriptions, Akvile make some pencil sketches, which eventually become the basis for the painting. From an early stage, Akvile will share these with you to ensure that they capture what you are looking for. Once the painting has begun, you will have access to images of the work in progress.

Pricing for commissioned work is individual and varies depending on the size of the piece, the complexity, the amount of research involved etc. After discussing with you your ideas, Akvile will provide you with a price, which will be the final price and not a proposal subject to change. An idea of the preparation time will also be given (the time required is often about a month for a given piece; obviously for periods when Akvile has a number of paintings on the go at the same time, the total elapsed time can be a bit longer).