Fiona Hernuss is a representational, figurative fine artist who is strongly committed to environmental and social consciousness.
She has found for herself that animals can build bridges between people. Often people don't see what happens right infront of their wide open eyes. Hernuss aims to break through this barricade of self defence. She wants to reach the hearts and minds of those who see her work. At times this can be quite shocking and irritating, but always in a noble, elegant and honest way. The important thing is to get the message across- no matter how small, banal or strong the message is - get it accross. Her art is monumental, touching and deep. It is honest and clear and straight forward, frontal. It leaves room for thought. It is deep and full.

With her classical, academic training, Fiona Hernuss learned to master not only various, highly demanding painting techniques, but also discover her strong talent in terms of color. This is truly one of her big strengths.

Another, almost magical gift given to her, is her amazing ability to capture the soul of the animals in the animal portraits that she paints on commission. Her dog portraits are of exquisite and fine beauty. They pull the viewer in and you think the next step is that the dog in the painting will actually lick your hand and say hello! It is as if she is creating a spiritual and physical clone of the individual animal. The owners of the pets are always deeply touched and stunned. Hernuss does not photorealistically copy from pictures - she "only" really, really captures the essence and the true character of the animals. She herself can not tell how and why this works. She only knows how to prepare well for the portraits: sketches, measures, observes, asks questions, arranges, composes, plans. Then, when she finally heads off to paint, she says that "The painting almost paints itself - believe me, I do not really think when I paint the antique pink of a wet nose of the rescued podenco canario from Spain - it actually seems to paint itself! Including the soul of the animal. It is just there - it suddenly stares at me - but always with a twinkle!"

Through the clear and attractive voice of her work, Fiona Hernuss supports various organizations that aim to protect the environment and that point out the weakspots of modern day life. She does this in a noble and elegant way. Her activism is quite passive, almost gentle. She speaks to the ones she wants to address in a polite language, and her language is her art - her paintings, with the various stories that go with them.

At the moment it is the sharks that have her full attention. She is supporting the spreading of knowledge of what is happening around the world. If the extinction of the shark is to be stopped in time, then we all need to step together and say no to shark finning right now. The oceans need the sharks. Sharks reprouduce VERY slowly, some need over 2o years to become mature enough to reproduce!
Finning is a huge business around the world. It is also brutal and of severe cruelty. 200,000,000 sharks get killed every year, most of them for their valuable finns. The finns get chopped off from the living shark and the shark is then thrown back into the sea- left to drown and bleed to death barbarically. So the consumer has to be educated and has to understand what is happening and what the severe ecological consequences will be: the oceans will die...imagine the rest. The international sharkproject is the organization that caught the immediate attention of Fiona Hernuss. With their dedicated and world wide, professional work in saving the sharks, we can be very proud to have such a group of visionaries to bring light into this dark corner and showing us the right way out.
Fiona Hernuss wants to tell this story to everyone she meets. including you. … Read More