Submit your wild-animal-focused art and photography. Anything goes for Wild Art Open! As long as there is a wild animal in your piece, it can be submitted. (No AI.)
This is the 5th Anniversary of Wild Heart Gallery's first call for art for a virtual exhibition. We are excited to open this art call for you!
Wild Heart Gallery's focus is on animal and wildlife artists. This art call and resulting virtual exhibition on wildheartgallery.com is focused on wild animals specifically.
About the Theme
About Entries
Artwork can be paintings, drawings, pastels, mixed media, print-making, sculpture in any form, fiber arts, metal art, collage, mixed media, and more. We have a category called, "Other Media," for artwork that is outside a listed medium.
When in doubt, make your viewer feel something.
Feel free to submit any style of animal/wildlife art and photography. Wild Heart Gallery really does love showing a range of art styles inside the wildlife- and animal-art genres. The styles of art we show reflect what the artists submit to our art calls. If you work in a particular style that you'd like to see more of in wild Heart Gallery's online shows, please submit work in that style. Our award-winning entries in the past for our various art calls included Realism, assemblage, photography, Contemporary Art, Modernism, Abstract Art, Surrealism, Impressionism, Fauvism, Pop Art, Expressionism, Contemporary Wildlife Art, traditional bronze sculpture, print making, temporary installation art, and so much more.
All entries must feature an animal and must be the original artwork of the submitting artist. No AI.
We embrace realism as fully as abstraction. We love loose brush strokes as much as highly detailed photographs. We live for finely crafted ceramics as much as mixed media experiments. We. Love. Art.
We are looking for 2D and 3D artwork, sculpture, and photography that falls into a variety of art style and genre categories: Abstraction, Portraiture, Surrealism, Realism, Pop Art, Expressionism, Assemblage, and more! Our mission is to promote wildlife and animal art in both non-traditional and traditional forms. We exist to honor, promote, and uplift it.
As always, art may include more than just animals. Feel free to incorporate humans, objects, landscapes, shapes, space, or anything else. The work needs to fit the theme, and the focus needs to be on the animal(s).
Be as literal or as creative with the theme as you like.
Originality is one of the components we use to score entries.
Best in Show ($350 cash award)
Overall Runner Up ($175 cash award)
Artivism Award ($75)
Artivism is art-activism, in this case, specifically about animals and/or the environment
Overall Honorable Mentions
Finalists
For more information about our awards, please see the Awards page.
Be as accurate as you can with the category.* Category selection helps the judges quickly identify what they are looking at and assess a work appropriately.
*If you aren't sure what the best category is, use Other Media. We receive so few digital art entries, that we decided to remove that category; please use Other Media for any digital works (no AI allowed).
It's okay if something is put into the wrong category on accident. It happens. It will not negatively impact your entry.
Deadline for Entries: August 20, 2026, 5:59pm Pacific Time Zone / GMT -8:00
Notification of Jury Results: September 2, 2026
Virtual Show Dates: September 2026
Policy: No nudity (private parts must be covered), no profanity, no animal cruelty, no gore, and no political artwork will be accepted for jury. Topics of animal conservation and environmental protection are not considered political for the purposes of Wild Heart Gallery, and they are suitable topics for the Artivism Award.
This is an art competition. Not all entries will be accepted. Only the award recipients will be in the online group exhibition on wildheartgallery.com.
You may submit up to 2 separate art pieces. Use the orange "Add Submission" button to add your second art piece.
*For Sculpture entries only, you may submit up to 2 additional views/images per art piece.
*For Photography, please note the make and model of the camera used and whether is film or digital.
$18 for 1-2 images
Artwork for the exhibition will be selected by industry professionals, referred to as jurors. The jurors will vote based on the number of entries, criteria for this event (theme), originality, technique, skill, and quality of work.
Jury Selection begins within 7 days after final entry date and ends within 15 days after final entry date.
Award recipients are the entered into an online group award exhibition that is published at a date sometime after final entry date.
The Juror(s) of the art competition are art industry professionals.
There are several criteria for selection for the award exhibition. These include relevance to the theme, originality, quality of work, technique, and technical skill. The goal is to have a cohesive, high quality virtual art exhibition that embraces various genres of animal and wildlife art. To make the experience enjoyable and worthwhile to artists, visitors, and more, we strive to select and display the artwork that best represents animal and wildlife art today.
***Please remember that this is a competition; only the best art will be selected for exhibition. Not all art that was entered will be included.***
The artist retains all copyrights to their artwork without exception.
By entering this art competition, you are granting Wild Heart Gallery a non-exclusive perpetual license to reproduce images of your artwork on wildheartgallery.com and artcall.org, and to publish the winners and accepted entries on Facebook and Instagram as well as other media outlets. Wild Heart Gallery also has permission to crop or re-size images to fit the needs of wildheartgallery.com and other media outlets. We do our best to show images without cropping them, but this is not always possible. All award-winning entries will be displayed on wildheartgallery.com. Each awarded image becomes part of the public archival online exhibition catalog for up to one year and possibly longer. If there is a Selected Works section, those works will be displayed on wildheartgallery.com and become part of the public archival online exhibition catalog for up to one year and possibly longer.
You will not hold Wild Heart Gallery or any of its affiliates, jurors, or members liable for anything.
All entry fees are non-refundable without exception.
All dollar amounts listed are in USD.
If you have a moment, please
Wild Heart Gallery is now using artcall.org for art call submissions and jurying. If you have questions about how this works or get stuck during the submission process, watch this video.
