British Botanical Artists - photographed with their paintings

Last night at the Private View for the "British Artists in the Shirley Sherwood Collection" exhibition at Kew Gardens, I took the opportunity to take photographs of a few more artists with their paintings.

I haven't seen the exhibition properly yet and will be going back to take a good long look at a future date. Suffice to say that people who visit will be very impressed and not a little overawed by some of the work in the exhibition.

First the two artists with major features in the exhibition - Coral Guest GM and Rosie Sanders GM.

Coral Guest with five of her paintings in the collection of Shirley Sherwood.

Rosie Sanders with five of her paintings

A not infrequent comment last night was "I thought I painted big, but....!"

Next we have two of the three teachers from the Diploma in Botanical Illustration course at Royal Botanic Garden  Edinburgh - and the lifesize painting of the Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum) which was recently purchased by Shirley Sherwood. She has now donated the painting to the Collection at Kew.

The painting is by Jacqui Pestell MBE (on left), Sharon Tingey GM (on right) and Işık Güner GM (teaching in Morocco at present).

Jacqui Pestell and Sharon Tingey who painted this life size version of 'Amorphophallus titanum' with Işık Güner

Other artists who were at the exhibition included:

• Martin J. Allen GM
• Andrew Brown GM
• Victoria Braithwaite
• Susan Chrisopher Coulson VPSBA GM
• Angeline de Meester GM
• Siriol Sherlock GM​

Martin Allen with his painting of horse chestnut buds

Andrew Brown with his Voodoo Lily

Victoria Brathwaite with her Globe Artichoke

Susan Christopher Coulson with her 'Sweet violet scattering'

Angeline de Meester with her Botanic Symbiosis December (Clematis climbing on Hawthorn)

Siriol Sherlock with her Magnolia

Others British artists present at the Private View for this exhibition and the Joseph Hooker exhibition were Helen Allen, Sandra Wall Armitage, Gillian Barlow, Christabel King, Barbara Oozeerally, Lucy T Smith, Jessica Shepherd, Fiona Strickland (who has a painting in the show), accompanied by the now fully recovered Robert McNeill, and Penny Stenning.

You can see more British Botanical Artists - in the page on my website about Contemporary Botanical Artists and Illustrators in the UK

Also present were Cynthia Rice, Treasurer of ASBA; Bryan Poole (who now lives in London) plus Beverly Allen, Chair of the Sydney Florilegium Society and  Colleen Morris, a heritage consultant and former National Chair of the Australian Garden History Society who are visiting Kew to discuss bring the Sydney Florilegium Exhibition to Kew in March 2018.

British Artists in the Shirley Sherwood Collection, together with Joseph Hooker: Putting plants in their place are being displayed at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens until 17th September 2017 (open every day until 10am to 5.30pm).

'British Artists' occupies two galleries - the main central gallery and Gallery 5 (nearest Marion North). Don't miss the 'smaller' paintings in Gallery 5.