Henriëtte van Staden was born in Bethlehem, South Africa in 1981, the eldest of four siblings and the only one not to pursue an engineering degree.  After obtaining a BCom degree in Risk Management and a brief stint in banking and foreign exchange she left the corporate sector to follow a more creative path and enjoyed a successful career as an international wedding photographer for 8 years.  

While she sporadically drew on and off during her thirties, it was only in 2017 that she decided to try her hand at drawing ‘more seriously’.  Greatly influenced by her love for all things feathered and furry and the way light illuminates nature, she became obsessed with capturing the minute details of life in coloured pencil.  By 2018 she discovered pastel pencils and panpastels – ‘her medium’ as she lovingly describes it and decided to follow a fulltime career as wildlife artist.  She featured in The South African Artist Magazine Issue 35 soon after and in February 2019 she hung up her camera and threw herself into the pursuit of an art career.  

Her work is delicate and feminine in nature with a fine attention to detail and knack for capturing life in the eyes of her subjects.  She also loves the texture of soft pastel and creates more impressionistic style works in both wildlife and landscapes in this medium. She is an associate member of the Society of Animal Artists, and a professional member of the International Guild of Realism, but her proudest achievement to date has been as a Wildlife Artist of the Year Finalist in 2020.