NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

Margaret Flockton Award 2023: Call for Entries

30/4/2023

Two important dates in May for scientific botanical illustrators:

The deadline for entries for the 2023 Margaret Flockton Award is Sunday 21 May EST
You can start submitting entries on Monday 8 May.

What is the Margaret Flockton Award?

The Margaret Flockton Award - organised annually by the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney - commemorates the contribution Margaret Flockton (1861-1953) made to Australian scientific botanical illustration.

Every year, illustrators from around the world submit scientifically accurate drawings that accompany the published taxonomic description of a plant, clearly highlighting all of the distinctive features of the species. Original taxonomic illustrations are highly detailed black and white drawings primarily undertaken in pen and ink, pencil or digitally rendered.

You can read more about past winners on my dedicated page The Margaret Flockton Award for Excellence in Scientific Botanical Illustration

Who can enter the Margaret Flockton Award?

Entries are welcomed from all those who generate scientific illustrations of plants.

All previous winners of the Margaret Flockton Award are eligible to enter, EXCLUDING the 2020, 2021 AND 2022 first prize winning artists.

Typically, the people who submit illustrations for this award - and win awards are professional botanical illustrators / people who produce scientific botanical illustrations for botanical gardens and botanists on a regular basis. However they' are NOT the only people who enter.

Enthusiastic botanical illustrators ALSO make up at least half the entries

this competition is NOT limited to those who generate income producing scientific botanical illustrations
scientific illustration entries from a wider group are always welcomed.

What can you enter?

The page relating to the Award includes a Guide to Scientific Botanical Illustrations - which I recommend you read before processing any further.

All illustrations MUST have been have been produced in the last two years i.e. after May 2021
Each artist may submit up to two illustrations. If you'd like to see the standard of work submitted you can view the 2020 Flickr Gallery for the Margaret Flockton Award 2020
Only full plate illustrations will be accepted (inclusive of habit study and diagnostic features of the species).
- There are very precise dimensions for the images you can submit
- Inclusion of scale bars, whilst not compulsory, is highly recommended.
Illustrations MUST be MONOCHROMATIC (i.e. not coloured - see above)
- EITHER black and white illustrations (for example created using pen and ink, graphite or scraperboard)
- AND/OR monochromatic, digitally rendered illustrations
- either published or unpublished
The illustration should include a small legend
- with plant name and all lettered components
- neatly written or typed at the bottom of the artwork
- outside of the image area
All illustration MUST be 100% of original artwork size
- the image area MUST be:
  - no larger than A3 (295 mm x 420 mm) and
  - no smaller than (180 x 250 mm), EXCLUDING legend.
  - Illustrations outside of these parameters will not be accepted.
- The digital canvas size may only be longer than A3 to allow for the legend.
All illustrations must be intended for 2D printed output.
- Animated or 3D rendered works or images dependent on digital viewing, as well as photos and photo montage works, are NOT eligible for submission.
- Eligible entries may be printed at 67% of original size to assess reproducibility at judging.
High resolution digital images of the each illustration MUST NOT exceed 200MB

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Sue Wickison to receive The Jill Smythies Award 2023

13/4/2023

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The Linnean Society of London has announced that Sue Wickison is the recipient of the Jill Smythies Award 2023. This award - and medal - will be officially presented to Sue at the Society’s AGM/Anniversary Meeting in May 2023.

I have updated my The Jill Smythies Award page on this website to reflect this.

Below you can find out more about:

Sue Wickison - a summary of her life and achievements to date
The Jill Smythies Award

Sue Wickison in her studio with recent paintings - you can see the one in front of her framed and hung in an exhibition at Kew in the photo below

About Sue Wickison

Sue Wickison with two of her paintings in the "Plants of the Qur'an" Exhibition at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew

BIOGRAPHY

Sue Wickison was born in 1958 and brought up in Sierra Leone, West Africa. She now lives on an island off the coast of New Zealand and works as a freelance botanical illustrator - typically in relation to native New Zealand plants (unless working on commission).

Education: She achieved an Honours degree in Scientific Illustration from Middlesex University London - in the days when such degrees were still available!
Career: for nine years she worked as a scientific botanical illustrator with different botanists at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew - and worked on various publications relating to Grasses, Orchids and Legumes.
Travel: Sue has travelled extensively collecting and illustrating botanical specimens.
Publications: Sue worked on worked on many illustrations for various floras and papers published in the Curtis's Botanical Magazine. She has produced very many botanical illustrations in monochrome and colour. The following are the main 'Kew Publishing' publications she produced illustrations for while working at Kew - and subsequently
- Grasses of Bahia, Renvoise, RBG Kew
- Legumes of Bahia, G. Lewis, RBG Kew
- Caesalpinia a revision of the Poincianella- Erythrostemon group, G .Lewis, RBG Kew
- Orchids of Vanuatu, B. Lewis and Cribb, RBG Kew
- Orchids of the Solomon Islands and Bougainville, B. Lewis and Cribb
- Orchids of Samoa, Whistler and Cribb, RBG Kew
- Plants of the Qur'an, Dr Shahina Ghazanfar
- Sue also has work included in “The Shirley Sherwood Collection: Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art" - by Shirley Sherwood'
Commissions: for various clients including New Zealand Plant Conservation Network - for the Individual Conservation Achievement Award given each year to recognise excellence in the field of plant conservation.
Collections: Sue has artwork in the collections of
- the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew,
- Hunt Institute of Botanical Documentation,
- a Royal Collection
- Shirley Sherwood Collection, and
- the Alisa and Isaac M. Sutton Collection
- various private art collections - mostly in the UK and New Zealand
Talks: Sue Wickison is giving an online talk about Plants of the Qur'an organised by Botanical Art Talks with Julia Trickey

One of the particularly noteworthy aspects of Sue's botanical illustrations is she does very much like painting plants with complex and/or unusual structures - often life size, irrespective of whether this means the paintings are also large!

Sue Wickison is an extremely accomplished botanical artist with field experience in many areas, namely the Solomon Islands, where she collected and recorded orchids. She has also worked on endangered species, depicting their life cycles, and has most recently illustrated Kew’s The Plants of the Qur’an: History and Culture by Dr Shahina Ghazanfar, with an accompanying exhibition running until Sunday 17 September at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art.
Narrative re The Jill Smythies Award

Dr Shahina Ghazanfar and Sue Wickison in front of two paintings from 'Plants of Qur'an' related to the Allium family.

AWARDS

Sue has received the following Awards prior to The Jill Smythies Award

Winston Churchill Trust Travelling Fellowship to travel to the Solomon Islands to collect orchids for Kew Gardens (see Artist Residencies, Scholarships and Bursaries on this website for more details). Sue discovered several new species of orchid and was honoured to have one, Coelogyne susanae, named after her.
2008: RHS Gold Medal for her exhibit about Arisaema at the RHS Botanical Art Show London (December 2008). Her exhibit comprised four graphite drawings and five watercolour paintings covering four different species
She has been awarded two Joyce Cumming Awards and two Certificates of Botanical Merit for work exhibited with the Society of Botanical Artists (SBA) in UK.

NOTABLE EXHIBITIONS

2006: Solo show at New Zealand House London and RHS
2007: Solo show (April / May 2007) at the Savill Gardens Windsor UK
2008: Arisaema at RHS Botanical Art Show, December 2008
2013: "Black and White in Colour" Exhibition (October 2013 - January 2014) - to which she contribute half the artwork for this Joint Exhibition with Sue Williams at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Royal Botanic, Gardens Kew (see my post 'Black and White in Colour' at Kew Gardens - a review)
2013: 13th International Exhibition of Botanical Art & Illustration | Hunt Botanical Institute of Botanical Documentation
2016: Nature's Bounty at Kew | Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art
2023: "Plants of the Qur’ān" Exhibition (1 April 01 to September 17 2023) - Gallery 1 and 2 | Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew

I'll be writing more about the latter exhibition in the near future and also publishing a video of a walk with Sue around the exhibition.

Sue Wickison in 2013 with her painting of Ravenala madagascariensis (Travellers Palm) which was added to the Shirley Sherwood Collection

You can

follow Sue on Instagram
connect with Sue via LinkedIn

About The Jill Smythies Award

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The Coronation Invitation - by Andrew Jamieson

8/4/2023

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It was a wonderful surprise to see that King Charles's interests in plants and natural history are reflected in the official invitation to the Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla on 6th May 2022.

The Official Invitation to the Coronation on 6 May 2023

About the Invitation

The Invitation has been sent to the 2,000 guests at the Coronation in Westminster Abbey. The Guests are a mix of what used to be called "the great and the good" but might more accurately described on this occasion as:

members of the Royal Family
important politicians and other people who represent offices of state - within the UK and other countries
some 850 valued members of society: community volunteers who have been awarded a British Empire Medal and key workers - particularly those identified as heroes of the Pandemic You can read about some of them on this page

Design of the Invitation

The original artwork for the invitation was hand-painted in watercolour and gouache. The design has then been reproduced and printed on recycled card, with gold foil detailing. â€‹

The British wildflower meadow bordering the invitation features lily of the valley, cornflowers, wild strawberries, dog roses, bluebells, and a sprig of rosemary for remembrance, together with wildlife including a bee, a butterfly, a ladybird, a wren and a robin. Flowers appear in groupings of three, signifying The King becoming the third monarch of his name.
The Coronation Invitation

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Beverley Allen - 2023 Shirley Sherwood Award for Botanical Art

5/4/2023

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I was extremely pleased to find out last week that Australian artist Beverley Allen is the second recipient and 2023 winner of the Shirley Sherwood Award for Botanical Art. Notably this award is for a contribution to botanical art - and not just for being an excellent botanical artist.

I think she is a Modern Master par excellence and a very quiet force of nature! She's very definitely an excellent choice in terms of what she has done within the wider family of botanical art and illustration at both a national and international level. Very, very few have achieved as much as Beverley.

The Shirley Sherwood Award is an accolade presented once a year in recognition of an artist’s contribution to Botanical Art. The prestigious award includes a prize of £10,000 and a dedicated space in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to display a selected artwork for a year.

Beverley Allen with her painting of Strelitizia nicolai - featured in the "Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art Exhibition" at Kew in 2019.

About the Shirley Sherwood Award for Botanical Art

Last year, Dr Shirley Sherwood inaugurated her new Shirley Sherwood Award for Botanical Art for an artist who has greatly contributed to the field of contemporary botanical art. The Award comprises:

a sum of £10,000 and
a dedicated space to exhibit work and highlight the artist's contribution in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery.

Two paintings of Strelitzia nicolai by Beverly Allen GM (RHS 2007, NYBG 2010) - see below - are now hanging in the Gallery. - at the end of Gallery 6. The one on the right was

the feature image of the exhibition The Shirley Sherwood Collection: Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art - see Australasian Exhibit in 'Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art' at Kew
used on the cover of the book produced in association with the exhibition.
featured in my review of the Australaisian artists in the exhibition

Beverly is a spectacular artist with bold and confident compositions. Full of clarity, vivid colour and stunning detail, her paintings beautifully capture the splendour of the natural world and have earned her both the RHS - Royal Horticultural Society Gold Medal and the inaugural Gold Medal for Botanical Art by the New York Botanical Garden.
Shirley Sherwood

Shirley Sherwood pictured last week (30.03.23.) at the Award Exhibition of Beverley's artwork in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew.

This post is about Beverley Allen and why she won the award. It's a summarised account of her professional life and development of her contribution to botanical art on an international level. It is also full of photographs of Beverley that I've taken over the years!

Links in this post are to official websites or pages on this website.

Timeline about Beverley Allen and her art

Beverley Allen with her painting "Bambusa Vulgaris 'Striata' (Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney)" 2005 (watercolour on paper; 29" by 66" ) - at the 'Botanicals - Environmental Expressions in Art' Exhibition, at Kew Gardens in 2013. Collection: The Alisa and Isaac M. Sutton Collection

1945: born in 1945 in Sydney, Australia. She was awarded a BA in Fine Arts from Sydney University prior to developing a career as a graphic designer.
1997: She began studying botanical art and became a botanical artist in 1998.

She told me back in 2017 that she had - like very many other botanical artists - been greatly inspired by the cover illustration of Contemporary Botanical Artists which was the first ever book about botanical art by Shirley Sherwood. So below you can see the the inspiration - the painting of the 'Cape Blue Waterlily' by Pandora Sellers on the front cover. (Colleen and Beverley were in the Gallery as they were organising the upcoming exhibition by the Florilegium and I was fortunate that we met on the day her inspiration was on display!
(This painting is also on display at the moment in "The Wonderful World of Water Plants" exhibition at SSG.)

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