NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

Drawn from Nature: Irish Botanical Art - Online and Reopening

30/5/2020

Some good news for those who thought they might miss Drawn from Nature: Irish Botanical Art at the National Gallery of Ireland - which features botanical art in Ireland spanning almost 300 years, from the 1720s to 2019.

Back in March I wrote about the opening of this new exhibition of botanical art (see link to blog post above). As luck would have it, it had hardly been open any time at all when the Pandemic started and all art galleries - and exhibition were closed around the world.

The GOOD NEWS is that:

Drawn from Nature: Irish Botanical Art will reopen on 20 July. The exhibition will then continue until 30 August 2020.
In the meantime, you can view Drawn from Nature Online - an online exhibition of a selection of watercolours, drawings and illustrations from the exhibition. This includes sections on
- Botanical Illustration
- The Botanical Portraitist
- plus a selection of artwork by Contemporary Botanical Artists on this link

Drawn from Nature celebrates three centuries of Irish botanical art. The exhibition includes drawings, watercolours, prints, and illustrated publications dating from the 1700s to the modern day. ....

While some of these artists ventured far across the world, others barely travelled beyond their townlands. Many were celebrated during their lifetimes; others (mainly women) worked diligently, anonymously, and with little recognition. In their work, art and science become one.

The Botanical Portraitist

The artworks depict a wide variety of plants - common and rare; native to Ireland and exotic; growing wild and carefully cultivated. Included are Botanical Portraits, Illustrated Flora, and the work of Botanical Illustrators. The exhibition also features work by ten contemporary artists who follow in this rich artistic tradition and forge the way ahead.

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SBA Annual Exhibition to go online - from 3rd June

27/5/2020

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Plantae 2020 - annual exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists

Good News! The Society of Botanical Artists announced today that ALL the artwork selected for Plantae Annual Exhibition 2020 will now be available to view in a NEW ONLINE EXHIBITION.

The original Annual Exhibition had been due to open at the Mall Galleries on 3rd June 2020. However on 19th March, the SBA were informed by the Mall Galleries that they would be closed with immediate effect - with no date for reopening in sight.

Instead Plantae will now go online on exhibition will open on 3rd June 2020 - and the exhibition will remain online until the end of June.

Hence it will be capable of being viewed - for the very first time - by anybody interested in botanical art living anywhere in the world!

Given the number of selected artworks in the show this is no small achievement - indeed I think it may well be the biggest online exhibition I'll have seen since lockdown started!!

Maybe online exhibitions will become the norm for all botanical art societies going forward? The Pandemic has certainly already changed a lot in terms of what we think of as normal going forward. At the very least, I think it's very appropriate that the oldest botanical art society in the world should be the first botanical art society to host a very large exhibition of botanical art available online.

To get some sense of what has been achieved -

Last year there were 431 artworks by c.190 botanical artists.
If you take a look at my review of last year's exhibition Review: Society of Botanical Artists 2019 - Plantae - you can see a sample of the number and standard of of artwork on view in the exhibition in my photos.

Announcement of new ONLINE exhibition opening 3rd June 2020 (Cherry Blossom painting by Billy Showell PSBA)

I'm not entirely clear about what which website the exhibition is going on or what the URL for the online exhibition will be. That will of course be announced by the SBA nearer to the time the online exhibition opens.

Sale of artwork

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NEW Online Botanical Art Exhibition by Jonathan Cooper

21/5/2020

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The Spring Exhibition at the Jonathan Cooper Gallery in Chelsea is celebrating botanical art with an ONLINE Exhibition - due to the constraints imposed by the lockdown.

You can see examples of the work of gallery artists in the exhibition below and much more on the exhibition website.
Please note, some have already been sold or reserved.
Click twice on a website image to get a large view.
The botanical artists included in the exhibition are listed below - with one of their images in the exhibition.
If you're interested in buying just click the enquire link on the page for each artwork and complete the form.

Fiona Strickland (six works) - Fiona is a world renowned botanical artist and tutor who lives in Scotland. b.1956 in Edinburgh , she received a Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Art at Edinburgh College of Art. Her watercolour paintings are complex and very detailed and demonstrate her amazing control over multiple layers of transparent watercolour to create her intense colour and beautifully rendered tone for the smallest details. She has exhibited internationally and has won several awards including a Royal Horticultural Society Gold Medal (2008) and The Hort's "Best in Show" Award at 18th Annual International in New York. Her botanical artwork is much in demand and is included in premier collections around the world - including the RHS Lindley Library, the Shirley Sherwood Collection and the Hunt Institute of Botanical Documentation and numerous private collections in Europe, USA and Australia. Jonathan Cooper represents her in the UK and the works in this show feature single blooms of spring flowers - tulips, poppies and hippeastrum.

Colour is Fiona Strickland’s signature approach to botanical watercolour. Her attention to detail and technical virtuosity in the use of transparent washes - used to build her vibrant paintings - highlights her skill in handling colour. Strickland's emotive response to the visual elements of colour, tone, texture and movement in the plant world is captured in her very personal approach to botanical painting.

Note also that Fiona Strickland's second solo exhibition "Tulipa" at Jonathan Cooper - which was due to be held this May - will now be held between 4th - 26th September 2020. It will feature 18 paintings in watercolour on vellum. I'll be writing more about this in due course.

Parrot Tulip (Tulipa Rococo) by Fiona Strickland - (Watercolour on Fabriano Artistico HP 640gsm) 27 x 21ins (68.6 x 53.3cm) (artwork size) £9,000

Rosie Sanders (six works) - Rosie lives and works in Devon and is well known for creating large to very large paintings of intense colour in watercolour on a variety of paper (Arches, Saunders Waterford and Richard de Bas). In London, her works is available from Jonathan Cooper's Park Walk Gallery and the works in the exhibition are priced between £3,800 and £34,000. She is a self-taught artist who started as a freelance botanical artist in 1974. Since then she has won five RHS gold medals and researched, written and illustrated a number of books including one on Roses and another on The English Apple. She exhibited with the Hunt Institute of Botanical Documentation in 1992 and her work was in the very first exhibition at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew (and a number of others since). Her work is included in numerous collections and she has been commissioned to produce paintings for both the Queen and the Queen Mother.

Now That April's Here by Rosie Sanders (Watercolour on Saunders Waterford 300gsm paper) 54.25 x 70ins (138 x 178cm) (artwork size) £34,000

Beverley Allen (six works) - was born in Sydney in 1945 and is now one of the leading botanical artists in Australia. has exhibited annually at the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney ‘Botanica’ Exhibition since 1999 and internationally including New York, Washington, Chicago, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Kyoto and London - winning prestigious awards. Her paintings are included in the Highgrove Florilegium and in the collections of the Royal Botanic Gardens in both Sydney and Kew Gardens, the RHS Lindley Library, the Hunt Institute in Pittsburgh. Her paintings in the exhibition are in watercolour on Arches paper, mostly at 50 x 40cm (£3,800 - £8,500)

White Bat Flower (Tacca integrifolia) by Beverley Allen (Watercolour) 24.41 x 22.44ins (62cm x 57cm) (artwork size) £8,500

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James Sherwood (1933-2020)

19/5/2020

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Other people will be writing about the amazing business career of James Sherwood who passed away peacefully last night.

I want instead to pay tribute to the man who supported his wife, Shirley Sherwood in her interest in and passion for botanical art - and who, with his family's support, gave us the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art.

Without the support of James Sherwood, we might not have had:

the patronage and support for the very many botanical artists around the world whose artwork is now part of The Shirley Sherwood Collection
the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens - which opened in April 2008
numerous fabulous exhibitions of botanical art - from all over the world - in the gallery as a result
the renaissance of botanical art around the world. That renaissance was greatly accelerated and promoted through the help and support offered by the Sherwood family.

The last time I saw him - in late November at the opening of Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art at Kew - I made a point of thanking him for everything he had done to support botanical art. He seemed somewhat surprised at the time - but I emphasised that I knew that his support had been absolutely vital to what has been achieved in the last 30 years.

James Sherwood attended all the Private Views for exhibitions of botanical art at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art - this is the one for the British Artists in the Collection in 2017

I learned of his passing on the Facebook Page dedicated to the Shirley Sherwood Collection.

We're so sad to say that Shirley's husband James B. Sherwood passed away peacefully last night. He'd been in hospital for the past few months after a major operation and we hoped he'd pull through but it was all just too much of a fight, even for someone as mighty as Jim.

You might have known him as the founder of shipping empire Sea Containers. Or the man who brought the Orient Express train back to life and built an entire luxury hotel brand around it. Or perhaps the consummate entrepreneur who always had projects in the pipeline. We just knew him as Jim - always on the move with a razor-sharp mind, a passion for Bridge, a loyal group of friends and colleagues all over the world and a family who loved and admired him.

James Blair Sherwood was an American who was based in Britain. He was

the founder of Belmond Ltd. (formerly Orient-Express Hotels Ltd) and
the founder and former president and CEO of Sea Containers Ltd.

Jim understood the passion of the true collector. He liked to collect classic trains and luxury hotels while Shirley preferred collecting botanical art.

However, many of the stories I have heard Shirley tell of how she found an artist or acquired a painting arose because of her travels with Jim to different parts of the world while he collected more hotels and oversaw those already in the portfolio. He went about his business while she found about the botanical artists in the area and met them and saw their art.

I'm very sure the Orient-Express Hotels company he founded and developed was one of the main reasons why the Shirley Sherwood Collection of Botanical Art is now a truly great international art collection which includes so much art (1000+ artworks) from over 300 botanical artists from 36 countries around the world.

This is a family legacy - it was a joint effort.

James Sherwood (with stick) in discussion with Bryan Poole a fine art printmaker of botanical art - at the Private View for British Botanical Artists in the Shirley Sherwood Collection

James Sherwood was born in New Castle, Pennsylvania in 1933 and grew up in Lexington, Kentucky. He studied at Yale University and earned a degree in economics in 1955, before starting his career in marine transport, trains and hotels and founding and running two major businesses. He has also been

a Trustee of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation;
a Member of the Executive Committee of the Advisory Board of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection;
Vice President of the Transport Trust;
a Member of the Advisory Committee of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England;
a Member of the Board of Save Venice, Inc.;
a Member of the International Council of Yale University;
a Trustee of the World Monuments Fund in Britain; and
a Trustee of Oxford Philomusica.

In 1994, James was made the 15th honorary citizen of Venice since the founding of the Italian Republic in 1867, in recognition of his support of the arts and culture of Venice.

REFERENCE:

James Sherwood interview: the man who relaunched the Orient-Express | The Telegraph
Belmond’s founder deserves his place in its history | The Financial Times
James Sherwood talks trains, hotels, ships, and true luxury | Octavian Report
James Sherwood | The British Travel and Hospitality Hall of Fame

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A new book from Işık Güner

12/5/2020

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Little blue book - Omphalodes cappodoci - by IÅŸÄ±k GÃ¼ner

Isik Guner has created a new book - of her little series of paintings of Omphalodes cappodoci (the Cappadocian navelwort) which grows in a forest near her home in Turkey.

Follow this link to download the book as a pdf file from wetransfer. It's available as a free download for the next seven days. You can also print it. (see her Instagram post below)
View a small video of her painting the plant below

View this post on Instagram

Hello everyone. I have a present for you â–¡ I finally completed the little series of Omphalodes cappodocia, and prepared â€˜LITTLE BLUE BOOKâ€™ which is simply can be dowloaded, and printed. This little book is including high-res images can be printed large scales to bring some magic into your houses. All you have to do follow the link in my profile, and click! If you like it, spread the flowers for the loved ones âœ¨âœ¨ It is only in this link for 7 days . . . FÄ±rtÄ±na Vadisiâ€™nden sizlere Ã§iÃ§ekler gÃ¶nderiyorum. Bir minik hediye hazÄ±rladÄ±m - Omphalodes cappadocica serisinden oluÅŸan kÃ¼Ã§Ã¼k mavi bir kitap yaptÄ±m - dilediÄŸiniz gibi indirebilir, bastÄ±rabilirsiniz. BeÄŸendiyseniz, sevdiklerinize mavi Ã§iÃ§ekler gÃ¶nderebilirsiniz. Åžu acaip gÃ¼nlerde evlerinize biraz renk katmasÄ± dileÄŸi ile.. gerekli linke profilimden ulaÅŸabilirsiniz â–¡â–¡ 7 gÃ¼n boyunca kitap bu linkte olacak #omphalodescappadocica #littlebluebook #botanicalartist #botanicalillustration

A post shared by IsÌ§Ä±k GuÌˆner (@benyesil) on May 12, 2020 at 3:46am PDT

View this post on Instagram

Still on this piece - Omphalodes cappadocicus. . . . Devam #Omphalodescappadocicus

A post shared by IsÌ§Ä±k GuÌˆner (@benyesil) on May 2, 2020 at 11:51pm PDT

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ABOUT Isik Guner (GM 2014) (BISCOT GM 2011)

Isik Guner has worked full time as a botanical artist for the last 10 years. Latterly she has also been an active teacher of botanical art using watercolour.

she is visiting botanical illustrator at RGBE (Facebook Page)
she was one of the botanical artists who worked on "Plants from the Woods and Forests of Chile".
IÅŸÄ±k's painting of Gunnera Tinctoria won the RHS Best Painting in Show in Spring 2014. (see below)
She has worked on a number of projects in the last 10 years and travelled very widely
She has exhibited widely and internationally including at the 19th International Botanical Congress (2017) and the 16th International Exhibition of Botanical Art at the Hunt Institute (2019)
She teaches workshops internationally
Her book Botanical Illustration from Life was published in English in 2019 - which is one of my best instruction books about botanical illustration.
She is currently working as the Art Editor on an Illustrated Flora of Turkey (a "lifetime project"). The aim is to illustrate all the species native to Turkey. It will comprise 28 volumes and will be published in 2023.

Isik Guner with her Best Painting Award - and her Gold Medal winning exhibit at RHS Botanical Art Show in 2014. (Photograph: Katherine Tyrrell)

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Deborah Lambkin wins Margaret Flockton Award 2020

8/5/2020

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Irish botanical illustrator Deborah Lambkin, who works in the UK as the RHS Orchid Artist, has won the Margaret Flockton Award 2020 for the scientific botanical illustration of a new orchid.

Unusually this year the announcement of the prizewinners was made by Denise Ora, the Executive Director of the Royal Botanic Sydney via video (see below).

Below the video is:

a short narrative about the purpose of the award and how it works
an explanation of why the first two exhibitions have cancelled and details of the third which may still go ahead
narratives about the first and second prizewinners
then details of the four botanical illustrators who have been highly commended

I'll also be doing another blog post (shortly) about the botanical illustrators who had work selected for this (online) exhibition in 2020.

IMAGES
Crops of the images are included in this post. You can see much better images in the Flickr Album Margaret Flockton Award 2020 - which also contains all 63 artworks selected "for exhibition"

Margaret Flockton Award 2020
for Scientific Botanical Illustration Prizewinners

â€‹The Margaret Flockton Award is specifically about scientific botanical illustration.
Entries are typically:

submitted by professional botanical illustrators
related to plates produced for the record and for scientific botanical publications.

Scientific botanical illustrators from around the world are invited by the curators of the exhibition at the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney to:

digitally submit scientifically accurate taxonomic illustrations
i.e. highly detailed black and white drawings primarily undertaken in pen and ink, pencil or digitally rendered.
that accompany a published taxonomic description of the plant,
with the drawing clearly highlighting all of the distinctive features of the species.

The Criteria used to judge the Award are listed below:

Accurate interpretation and portrayal of the plant characters and diagnostic features highlighted in the botanical description
Technical merit
Artistic merit
Composition
Reproducibility

See A Guide to Scientific Illustration (on the Margaret Flockton Award page on the RBG website - at the bottom) for more information on judging criteria.

The Judges for the 2020 Award were all from the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney.

Catherine Wardrop - RBG&CP Botanical Illustrator and Margaret Flockton Award Curator
Lesley Elkan - Botanical Illustrator
Karen Wilson, Honorary Research Associate.â€‹

You can see what they were faced with below.........

View this post on Instagram

The entries are in! Thanks to the amazing artists who have entered the 2020 Flockton Award. 63 entries from 46 artists from every corner of the globe! Good luck to all. #penandink #blackandwhiteinkdrawing #botanicalillustrationpenandink #scientificillustration #botanicalillustration #botanyart

A post shared by Catherine W & Lesley E (@rbg_illustration) on Mar 9, 2020 at 11:59pm PDT

PRIZEWINNERS

I think I'm right in saying all six botanical illustrators have been honoured with prizes or commendations by the Margaret Flockton Award for the first time (I'll be checking!)
â€‹
1st Prize ($5,000 AUS): Deborah Lambkin

Crop of part of the illustrationof crop of Gastrodia sp. nov. by Deborah Lambkin - view the full image by clicking the pic

Deborah Lambkin (Ireland / United Kingdom) has won the First Prize of AUS$5,000 for her depiction of Gastrodia sp. nov. - a new orchid species from Madagascar.

Deborah has been a Scientific Botanical illustrator over 30 years. Currently she is the RHS Orchid Artist working for the Royal Horticultural Society and the Eric Young Orchid Foundation, She also creates scientific botanical illustrations for botanists working at the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew.

Deborah was born in Ireland and lives in London. She trained at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin.

In 1999, she won an RHS Gold Medal for her collection of eight paintings of Nerines
In 2001, she exhibited at the 10th International Exhibition of Botanical Art and Illustration at the Hunt Institute of Botanical Documentation in Pittsburgh, USA
In 2005, she was appointed as the official 'Orchid Artist' to the Royal Horticultural Society Orchid Committee. To date she has contributed nearly 500 orchid paintings to the Royal Horticultural Society's Orchid Painting Collection.
In 2014 she joined RHS Picture Advisory Panel and is involved with judging at the RHS Botanical Art shows. She also exhibited at the World Orchid Conference Botanical Art Exhibition 2014.
In 2019 she was awarded the Jill Smythies Award for excellence in published botanical illustrations.
Her scientific illustrations have been published in Curtis Botanical Magazine and she has work in the collection of the Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin in Dublin, Ireland.

Deborah is a member of the Irish Society of Botanical Artists and the Chelsea Physic Garden Florilegium Society. "Beauty at a brush stroke" (Twitter) is an Irish Times article about Deborah and her work.

All in all, Deborah is a professional botanical illustrator who both draws and paints and has now had her work recognised by all the top exhibitions, competitions, awards and prizes for botanical art and Illustration. The Margaret Flockton Award now gives her "the full set" and she now moves into the illustrious company of those very few botanical illustrators who have achieved the same. (I'm off to count them - I know there's not a lot!)

You can follow Deborah Lambkin on Twitter and Instagram

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NEW: Shirley Sherwood video profiles the paintings in her botanical art collection

5/5/2020

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Yesterday I was really pleased to see that Shirley Sherwood has started a NEW project to talk about the botanical paintings in her collection - on video!

You can find the video on her Facebook Page The Shirley Sherwood Collection.

Below is the very first video where Shirley is talking about the Chinese Elm Bonsai painted by Jeannetta Van Raalte. (The link is to the page about the painting on the new website for the Shirley Sherwood Collection and this is the link to the page profiling Jeanetta Van Raalte)

It's just like being with her in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew when she is doing one of her tours about the new exhibition and is talking about individual paintings. What's great is that she combines:

appreciation and knowledge about the plant
stories about the individual painting and/or plant
explanations about why she particularly likes the painting

Here's how it all came about.

Shirley Sherwood has been in lockdown in her Oxfordshire home for 6 weeks so the family have started a project to keep her busy ?
We're going to video her telling stories about all 1,020 paintings in the Shirley Sherwood Collection so it's going to take quite a while! The stories will be posted to this page, one day at a time, and will be going on the Shirley Sherwood Collection website alongside the description of each painting.

What you need to do to see the videos

This is a wonderful opportunity to hear a VERY knowledgeable botanical art collector talk about her botanical paintings and what made them collectable! You may learn a lot!

In order to view the videos you should:
EITHER

BOOKMARK The Shirley Sherwood Collection Facebook page - which is a public page and you can see whether or not you are a member of Facebook
Like and follow the page if you are a member of Facebook.
Leave a comment - The way Facebook works is that liking/following does not seem to be enough to generate am alert in your new feed. However if you check in every day AND LEAVE A COMMENT, this should then mean that you'll get alerted when a new video appears! :)

Take a look at the Facebook Page every so often - and have a BOTANICAL ART BINGE FEST of videos about the paintings! This too is a good way to consume right now! :)

Indue course - check out my Archive Page about the Shirley Sherwood Exhibitions. I'll be creating something to:
- EITHER link to where the video links are listed on the Collection website - each one is apparently going on the page with the painting
- OR list the artists and paintings on my website and provide a link to the Collection website. BUT I'll probably wait a while to see what materialises as the project gets underway

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Lockdown Projects

If you too have a Lockdown Botanical Art Project which you think other people will be interested in do - and would like to share - please get in touch and tell me about it.
Don't forget to send me images and/or a link to where I can read about it and/or an explanation as to why other botanical artists might be interested.

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