A little while ago I asked the RHS whether they could provide some detailed answers to questions about various aspects of assessment relating to the RHS Botanical Art Show which are of interest to

• those wanting to submit to a future RHS Botanical Art Show
• those exhibiting this year or in future - and
• all those wanting to know how to win a Gold Medal AND maybe a Best Exhibit or Best Painting Award.

The RHS have very kindly responded with some very informative answers to my questions via ​Charlotte Brooks, the Secretary to the Picture Panel.

I asked an awful lot of questions and the answers run to five A4 pages!
So I'm going to post all the questions and answers over three days as follows:

• Seeking approval to exhibit (today - see below)
  
• The Judges and the Judging Process (tomorrow Monday 25th June)
• How the colour of the medal and additional awards are decided + Feedback (Tuesday 26th June)

I'll also be including images from past Botanical Art Shows and the information will also be included on my website page about the RHS Botanical Art Shows.

What follows is what the RHS told me (i.e. their words).

The Selection criteria are similar to the judging criteria, but at this stage the judges are principally looking at the artist’s technical skill and the quality of their botanical illustration. Although the judges will also offer feedback on other areas if there is something that stands out as being particularly well executed, or if there are things that should be avoided.

The criteria are summarised as follows:
• Quality of botanical illustration 
• Quality of the presentation
• Overall impression 

The pieces that are submitted should demonstrate good draughtsmanship and the artist’s ability to handle form, texture, colour, tonal range.

The horticultural and botanical content in the pictures is also important (e.g. life-cycle stages / magnifications / habit), as it distinguishes a work as being a piece of botanical illustration.

​Although artists do not have to submit the work they intend to exhibit, the submission should be representative of the overall quality of their work.  

Artists are encouraged to send in examples of their best and most recent work.

• If an artist works in more than one medium, for example graphite and watercolour, but is unsure which to exhibit, the judges may offer feedback on which of the examples they consider to be stronger.
• The exhibit should be consistent, not a mix of pictures executed in watercolour, graphite, coloured-pencil or gouache.
• However, if an artist chooses to create their work in a combination of graphite and watercolour, this is permissible.
• The overall exhibit must be unified.

The medals awarded at the Botanical Art Show at the this years RHS Malvern Spring Festival (10-13 May 2018) got overlooked in the run up to the Botanical Art Worldwide events.

So, by way of making good, below are the names of the people who were awarded medals at this event.

Note this is always a small botanical art show and I'm not sure how many exhibitors there were.  I suspect one of the reasons it is so small is that the LondonShow has got bigger and bigger. However I do know that some people do like to try exhibiting for the first time in a smaller venue which is less intimidating! 

I don't have any images of the artwork - and would be very pleased to receive any for publication that might be out there!

To exhibit at an RHS Botanical Art Show you first have to be approved to exhibit.
The RHS website has a page which tells you about Exhibiting at RHS Shows

You will also the following pages on this website to be helpful

• RHS Botanical Art Exhibitions
• Tips from RHS Gold Medal Winners 

The catalogue for In Ruskin's Footsteps - the England and Wales contribution to the Botanical Art Worldwide initiative is considerably smaller than the last BAW book I reviewed (see Book Review: 'Éireannach - Celebrating Native Plants of Ireland'). 

​That said, it is also packed full of content.

Its creation was organised by the Association of British Botanical Artists (ABBA) and supported by the Dawn Joliffe Botanical Art Bursary awarded by the Royal Horticultural Society.

The catalogue format is an A5 sized paperback with a glossy and very colourful cover. 
Within that cover there are 64 pages which comprise:
Committee and Judges

• details of those who sat on the Association of British Botanical Artists Committee that organised the exhibition and associated events
• the names and credentials of those who acted as jurors for this open exhibition

Background:

• an explanation of the purpose of the exhibition together with background about of ABBA - which was created to organise the exhibition for artists living in England and Wales
• a very brief summary of Native Plants in England and Wales and some examples. I thought it unfortunate that this omitted the precise meaning of "native indigenous plants" and exactly how these vary from those that grow in the country now - after very many imports of plants from overseas. It assumes people know and yet visitors may well be people who are not botanists or botanical artists and/or do not NOT properly understand the terms 'native' or 'indigenous' within the context of plant life - and consequently why this exhibition is different from other exhibitions they may have seen. 
• the role of the Peter Scott Gallery within Lancaster University - and an explanation of the connection between the name of the exhibition and the venue as a home for the work of Ruskin.
• statements about Partnership conservation organisations

Plants

• Wvery artwork is given one A5 page for an image, name of the plant in terms of latin and common name and the name of the artist and the media used - plus an explanation about the painting
• Overall, the quality of the image reproduction is very good but I was left wanting bigger images. The images are not untypical of many small catalogues (i.e. typically around 4x3inches). The quality of the scanning and printing appears to have captured a lot of detail.
• The text is the artist's explanation of the plant. The voice of each artist is clear and present and each talk about similar points e.g. reasons for choosing the plant, how they sourced it and what is known about it in terms of its habit and uses past and present. However I tended to very much prefer the text of those like Kew illustrator Christobel King who focus on the plant alone and the challenges it presents for presentation and how she tackled this in her artwork
• (Note: The website also provides images of the artwork)

Artists Profiles

• each artist gets a profile. I'm afraid with my 'adviser on artist statements' hat on I dearly wanted to edit some of the profiles. I felt this was a section which would have benefited from an edit to make it much more succinct when read as a whole.
• While it was good to see the domain names of the artists websites included, they weren't obvious and I'd have liked to have seen these more easily (eg underlined or italicised maybe)

End Pages

• the end pages provide a good visual insight into some of the kit and working processes of botanical artists in terms of studies done prior to the final work. It was good to see the sketchbook work and the notes.

In my desire for bigger images, I did try working out whether this might have been possible. It occurred to me that maybe a landscape format in A5 might have worked better in terms of enlarging images and constraining the number of words allowed, 

Distribution
Very sensibly ABBA has decided to sell the catalogue around the world. I know a lot of botanical artists and organisations involved with the Botanical Worldwide initiative are very keen to see what other people have produced - and it's great to see an organisation that is making this possible.  I suspect the size of the catalogue was determined in part by the need to make postage easier and I commend ABBA for doing this.

It's very nice to have large books but they can cost a lot to send as well as produce.  In this case keeping the publication compact makes the price more reasonable. I particularly liked the fact that the price includes all postage and packing so you know straight away when looking at prices what buying a copy is going to cost you. In terms of pricing, I suggest you click the links as the catalogue has three different prices depending on whether you are located in the UK, Europe or the rest of the world. There's also a discount for buying more than one copy.  

Conclusion
In summary, the catalogue is a little slow in 'arriving' in terms of its content. In essence the catalogue content is the wrong way round. 

For the visitor who knows nothing about the background to the exhibition, what they need from this particular exhibition catalogue is a very brief introduction about 'Botanical Art Worldwide', the reason for the focus on native and indigenous plants - with an explanation of what these are - and a brief explanation about the exhibition title. Followed by the explanation about the artwork, plants and artists up front. The rest is interesting - but is not what the exhibition is primarily about. 

Naturally for a one-off exhibition like this, I recognise that it's important to create a record of the 'workings' i.e. how it came about, who was involved and who did what in terms of both people and organisations. However this is a historical record and in my opinion, the explanations about the Committee and Judges and the organisations that were involved and supported could have come at the end and not lost any value as a record - while very much enhancing the exhibition experience via the catalogue for visitors - and for those buying the catalogue even if they have not seen the exhibition.

There is to be a second special event at the Peter Scott Gallery on the 9th June. No booking is required and all events are free entry. The events are:

• 11am – 12 noon - a tour of the exhibition by Martin Allen who works in native plant conservation and is also an RHS Gold Medal winning botanical artist.
• 2pm – 3pm and will be led by Sarah Morrish. The theme of the talk is ‘Fieldwork and Research Techniques for Botanical Art’.  This will give aspiring and more experienced botanical artists an overview of how best work to in the field and how you can then research your subject further, through direct investigation of the subject and additional research techniques - from botany to paper. Sarah's working background  is in ecology / conservation and she  is an experienced tutor, botanical and natural science artist.​

This post is about the Medals awarded for Botanical Art at Botanical Images Scotia (BISCOT) at Gardening Scotland (1-3 June 2018) at the Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh.

This international exhibition of contemporary botanical illustration this year attracted exhibitors from Japan, Switzerland and England as well as Scotland

It is held annually at Gardening Scotland and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Which is why when it closes at the show, it transfers to the John Hope Gateway at the Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh and reopens to the public on 6th June 2018 and continues until 21 June 2018 (See Facebook Event Page - the exhibition doesn't yet seem to have made it to the Exhibitions Page on the RBGE website). BISCOT is run entirely by volunteers with the support of both the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Below you'll find a list of the medals awarded together with images of some of the works and some of the artists.

The Mary Mendum Medal has not been awarded this year.

Hideko Kamoshita (Tokyo, Japan) won a Gold Medal for her display of Cirsium (Asteraceae)  and the Best in Show Award for Cirsium vulgare

I don't think Hideko has exhibited at BISCOT before. I certainly saw her exhibit of six works on a theme of Cirsium at the RHS Botanical Art Show in 2017 which won a Silver Gilt Medal.

• Sarah Howard (UK) - A Norfolk Arboretum
• Group Exhibit (UK) Sir Cedric Morris Iris Florilegium
• Amanda Willoughby (UK) - Coal, Collapse, Colonisation: Plant Species Colonizing The Decaying Industrial Features Of An Abandoned Victorian Colliery
  
  

I've not seen the artwork so I'm certainly not the best Judge of images presented. However I am somewhat perplexed by the fact that several multiple RHS Gold Medal winners have all been awarded a Silver Medal!

I'd be very interested to hear the comments of those attending the exhibition and viewing the work - on this blog or otherwise.

For everybody else you're in the same situation as me. If you want to take a closer look, you can see larger images of the work in the Facebook Album BISCOT 2018. Otherwise read on...

This post highlights the botanical artists who won medals at The 6th Annual Botanical Art Show at Bloom in the Park in Dublin opened yesterday and the medals were awarded. In this post you'll find a list of the botanical artists winning medals at the Botanical Art at the Bloom Show in Dublin - plus a brief profile of each artist winning a medal.

​I'll be back tomorrow to add in more award-winning images from this show. 

​The exhibition also includes paintings by floral artists which are listed at the end

Shevaun Doherty - Teloschistes chrysophthalmus, Golden Eye lichen. 

Shevaun not only won the only Gold Medal and Best in Show Award (her second Best in Show - she won in 2017 as well) - she also sold the painting to a major botanical art collector!  I can't help feeling that apart from the exquisite painting of this lichen that one of the things which appealed to the Judges was that I don't think anybody has painted a lichen before for the show - and yet lichens grow everywhere in Ireland!

I always feel some pride when Shevaun does well as it is one of my blog posts (note the first comment!)  which originally stimulated her to apply to do the SBA Diploma - for which she was awarded a Distinction. Since then she has done extremely well in terms of being awarded previous Gold Medals at Bloom (2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017) and prizes elsewhere and developing workshops and tuition for aspiring botanical artists - especially those wanting to learn how to paint on vellum.

Elaine Moore Mackey - Arisarum probiscideum, Mousetail Plant
Elaine started Botanical Illustration in 2013 and she completed a course at the Burren College of Art in 2014.  She has just graduated from the Distance Learning Diploma run by the Society of Botanical Artists (UK). 
​
Holly Somerville - Iris 'Turkish Blue'
Holly Somerville was born in Dublin and now lives in Wicklow. She is a botanical artist, illustrator and teacher. Her academic accreditation as a botanical artist comes from scientific and artistic perspectives. She has an MA in Botany from Somerville College, Oxford and a BA in Visual Communication from Edinburgh College of Art, where she specialised in illustration and photography. In the past she has worked in the herbarium of the Botany Department of Trinity College, Dublin. She has produced very many botanically correct pen and ink drawings for publications about Irish Flora and researchers at Trinity College and other universities around the world. She's also exhibited regularly and extensively in both Ireland and Ulster.

​Jane Stark - Anthurium hybrid
Jane Stark is a botanical artist living in the west of Ireland. A graduate of the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, Canada, she has worked in graphic design and natural history illustration in Canada, the US and Ireland, specialising in high quality publication design. She is a founding member of the Irish Society of Botanical Artists (ISBA) and is currently President of ISBA. She has also been a leading light in getting the two ISBA books published Aibítir: The Irish Alphabet in Botanical Art and Plandaí Oidhreachta, Irish Heritage Plants. She is also the curator of the annual Claregalway Botanical Art Expo, held in conjunction with the Galway Garden Festival at Claregalway Castle. ​

Lynn Stringer
- ‘Douglas Fir’- painting sold
- 'Iris "Haute les voiles"’
Lynn is Chair of the Irish Society of Botanical Artists. She lives and works in County Wicklow.  She studied Fine Art at DIT College of Marketing and Design in Dublin as a mature student and graduated with a first in painting. She regularly holds botanical art classes and exhibits her work at various plant fairs in Ireland (see website for details). She won an RHS Silver Medal in 2013 when she exhibited six paintings about Kilmacurragh and the Plant Hunters from her long term project to paint plants from Kilmacurragh (part of the National Botanic Gardens). She's a member of ISBA and ASBA. See An Interview with Lynn Stringer

The Irish Society of Botanical Artists organised the Irish exhibition Botanical Art Worldwide – Éireannach - Celebrating Native Plants of Ireland. This was held at the National Botanic Gardens, 9 Glasnevin Hill in Dublin between 6-27 May 2018.

However the exhibition lives on in its catalogue and for all of us who were unable to get to the exhibition, this is a wonderful document to have for all sorts of reasons.

This is a review of that book Éireannach – Celebrating Native Plants of Ireland in which I endeavour the count the ways in which it is VERY IMPRESSIVE!  

I don't often rave about a book - but this is one of those occasions!
​

I've been impressed with the way that the Irish Society of Botanical Artists - which was formed just over four years ago, in March 2014, has produced a book for every one of its three exhibitions to date.

Maybe that's because they have regarded each exhibition and each book as the outcome of a very specific project. What is even more laudable is that every project has focused on Irish plants 

• Aibítir: The Irish Alphabet in Botanical Art - focused on illustrating the variety of plant forms and habitats in native plants on the whole island of Ireland. The project used the Celtic uncial script as a structure on which to 'hang' the plants. The first book was small - but perfectly formed - and it sits on my bookshelves!
• Plandaí Oidhreachta - Heritage Irish Plants - the second project celebrated the the wealth of good Irish Garden Plants within the context of botanical illustration.
• Éireannach – Celebrating Native Plants of Ireland - the third project is intended as a celebration of Irish Native Plants

​ 

Every single plant in the exhibition has:

• at least a single (large) page to itself - while some enjoy a double page spread
• the latin name, the common name, the Celtic name and the Genus and family
• the name of the artist
• the story of the plant - which includes where the plant was found, what the name means - in terms for example of history or habitat or growth features. Plus a detailed description of the botanical features of importance and finally any interesting facts or stories associated with the plant
• the image of the botanical art. Some also have a photo of the plant and/or an enlargement of part of the plant of interest - such as the flowers of the Sundew.

What impresses me about the ISBA projects is that they are "rooted" literally and metaphorically in the plants and the botany and getting to know the plant each artist is painting. It's a marvellous practice and an excellent standard for a botanical art society to set as a challenge to members wanting to participate in its projects.

I'd go so far as to say it is a practice I'd commend to other botanical art societies.  From a standing start in 2014 ISBA have well and truly demonstrated what can be accomplished - and this book is the evidence of that.

In terms of the botanical art - the standard is excellent and I think some excellent decisions were made as to which merited a double page spread.  
​