The Society of Wildlife Artists

Harriet Mead first exhibited with the Society when she was in her late teens and is the current President of the SWLA. A sculptor working in welded steel, she makes her pieces entirely from old tools and agricultural scrap which she collects from farms, sheds and market stalls near her home in rural Norfolk. The intrinsic strength of the materials allows her to weld pieces with delicate points of contact and to capture movement in her work. She loves using the discarded tools, often worn by years of use, and reinventing them in parts of her sculptures and has an enormous collection in her studio as each tool can be subtly different so it can take a while to find the perfect item. She often says that she is making natural history from agricultural history. 

She has taken part in various SWLA Projects including the SWLA/BTO Flight Lines Project, the SWLA/DWT Kingcombe Project and the SWLA Wadden Sea Project. She has been a participating artist with the Artists for Nature Foundation, which sends internationally renowned wildlife artists to areas of conservation concern to document and highlight an area important for wildlife. She was awarded the Wildlife Trusts Undersea Art Award which gave her the opportunity to learn to dive so that she could make work in response to the marine life off the UK coast. She has received various awards including the ING Discerning Eye Humphries Prize, the ING Discerning Eye Founders Prize, the SWLA Capmark Europe Prize and the Langford Press 3D Award. She has public art pieces around the UK including museum pieces of a life-sized cow in Dungannon and a life-sized plough horse at the Somerset Rural Life Museum.