Translation:

 

With Art Against Poachers

With lots of pink, Sabrina Rupprecht fights for endangered animals

 

By Claudia Radzwill
 

 Wipperfurth. She grew up in Ohl, went to Kindergarten in Dohrgaul, graduated from the Engelbert-von-Berg Gymnasium in 2004. After that Sabrina Rupprecht moved to South Africa in 2006. Today, the far away country is her home.

“I completed my Fashion Design studies in Stellebosch, near Cape Town, after I started the course in Dusseldorf” she explains. She didn’t stay in the fashion industry. Instead, she now paints wild animals such as elephants and lions on large 150x150cm canvases and calls out against big game poachers in Africa.

Her first collection of six paintings was exhibited in California and Florida last year. At the end of the year a private art collector from Canada purchased the pieces. The artist is working on her next series of animal paintings now. She sticks to a variation of pink and focuses on elephant, cheetah, giraffe and zebra, which she creates in pinks, purples and blues.

After graduating from her studies she traveled through Africa, saw eleven countries and visited more than 50 national parks and reserves. “The animals impressed me the most.” Back in Cape Town she found a job as a handbag designer and later consulted German customers in a call center. “The job was important to keep my work visa. But I’m not really a person who enjoys sitting behind a computer.”

In her spare time she started her own fashion line and enjoyed drawing portraits of celebrities that she liked. When a friend saw her drawings, she was interested in buying one. This was the moment that changed everything. “I went to get the drawing scanned and printed on canvas for my friend and sold it to her at cost price. I didn’t want to sell the original’” says Rupprecht.

Over time, she received more and more inquiries regarding her artworks. Instagram became her platform and next to her fashion designs she started posting her drawings. With success: Soon she was receiving orders. “People were sending me photos and I drew their portraits for them.” She enjoyed it so much that she gave up her fashion line and started focusing on her art 2015.

“At some point I decided that I didn’t feel like waiting for orders anymore. I wanted to have more creative work that came from my own ideas and I wanted to work with more color.” And that marked the beginning of her “Pink Safari”.