NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

Copyright Infringement Alert!

4/1/2020

When you have a website like mine, lots of people tell me about things which are happening which need to be shared with a wider audience. Below I am going to highlight a specific example relating to copyright infringement which affects quite a lot of leading botanical artists.

One such 'thing' is when the artwork of botanical artists is posted online by other people without the artists permission. I find artists are very protective of the artwork of other artists and are happy to highlight examples of individuals who post images they did not make and do not own on social media in an inappropriate way.

This used to happen a lot on blogs in the past - and now it tends to happen on sites like Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest

This is despite the fact that the community guidelines for the use of the site - which you must agree to before you become a member - make it clear that you should only upload images you own or have the right to share (eg image is in the public domain).

So, for example, this is the guideline from Instagram.

"Share only photos and videos that you’ve taken or have the right to share.
As always, you own the content you post on Instagram. Remember to post authentic content, and don’t post anything you’ve copied or collected from the Internet that you don’t have the right to post. Learn more about intellectual property rights." Instagram Community Guidelines

People may post images they shouldn't be sharing online for one or more of three reasons:

they never read the terms and conditions of the site
they are ignorant of the law and regulations relating to copyright
they are intent on building a following so they can start generating income from their account (and YOUR CONTENT!).

My view is that we need to be aware of all those abuse the trust of others - in posting their artwork online - and should take appropriate action. Hence this post.

What you do is entirely up to you - but I have a couple of suggestions below.

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Jessica Shepherd paints leaves and sells!

17/2/2017

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Jessica Shepherd at the Private View for Leafscape at Abbott and Holder

Last night I left Leafscape, the first solo exhibition of watercolour paintings of leaves by Jess Shepherd (aka JR Shepherd), at the Abbott & Holder Gallery in London with the knowledge that she had sold 19 of the 31 watercolour paintings of leaves in the exhibition.

You can see photos of some of the paintings in this review and you can see them all on the Leafscape page on Abbott and Holder's website. For the record:

small paintings (19 x 13cm) are priced at £400;
medium watercolours (76 x 54cm) are £1,800 and
large ones (120 x 90cmx) are £3,200.

Try spotting the red spots on my photos of some of the paintings in this blog post!

The exhibition is on at Abbott & Holder, 30 Museum Street, London WC1A 1LH until 6pm Saturday 25th February 2017.

The preparation

The story started when Jess was an Assistant Curator at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew and spent an entire summer in 2013 with The Colours Of Reality exhibition by Rory McEwen. Rory of course painted leaves towards the end of his life.

They proved to be a huge inspiration for a botanical artist who was already interested in and painting leaves. - I remember well the Monstera, the Broccoli, the Cos and the absolutely enormous 'Green Giant" coffee arabica plant!

Last year, I spent some time with Jess while she told me her plans for this major solo exhibition. I do very much remember trying to talk her out of planning to exhibit at the RHS Botanical Art Exhibition (next week) at the same time as she had this exhibition!

Over the last year I've watched as the project to develop the paintings for the exhibition gathered apace. Followed by the crowdfunding Kickstarter initiative to develop a properly printed book/catalogue for the exhibition.

In celebration of the Leafscape exhibition, I would really like to produce a limited edition, linen bound, hard-back book that presents all of the paintings and the environmental soundtrack of all the outside sounds from where each leaf was growing at the time it was found.

Her target was £8,500 which would allow the book to be published.

However, the Kickstarter was a roaring success, she got 439 backers who pledged £24,867 to help bring this project to life - and I was one of them! As a result the hard back copies of the book had sold out before the exhibition even opened!

She now has another Kickstarter going for a softback follow up of the book and the copies are limited to 500. 71 have already gone so click the pic below to go there if you're interested.

I talked to the Gallery Director last night about Jess and her Leafscape project and exhibition. He told me that they are very happy with the sales on the PV night but that these were not unexpected.

The reasons why they were very happy to back Jess and give her an exhibition were that:

there was absolutely no question about either the very high quality of the work or her energy to produce the required number of paintings for a solo exhibition
it was also very obvious that Jess is amazing at self-promotion and attracting both backers for and interest in her project and paintings

I'm going to be doing an interview with Jess in the near future. She knows that I regard what she's done with this exhibition as a "best practice" example of how to succeed as a botanical artist and sell botanical art. I think she has lessons to teach others about how to succeed because, after all, it's not just about producing the paintings!

What's next?

Those of us who contributed to the crowdfunding for the book will be getting our books very soon as per our commitment.

I highly recommend that anybody coming to London next week for the RHS Botanical Art Show on Friday and Saturday also make an effort to travel across to Museum Street and see this exhibition. Let it kickstart your efforts towards a solo exhibition!

Look out for another blog post from me about Jessica Shepherd and how she got from behind the desk in the gallery at Kew to having a solo exhibition in a gallery in Museum Street opposite the British Museum.

This summer, Jess is going to be the artist in residence at River Cottage HQ during June and July. Lots more leaves to paint there!

When she finally gets to exhibit at the RHS, I just know it's going to be spectacular!

If you'd like to follow Jess in future ventures see:

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Facebook Page for Botanical Art and Artists

24/2/2016

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The brand new Botanical Art and Artists Facebook Page

Two announcements today.

I know a lot of people follow botanical art via social media and the use of Twitter and Facebook enables those who use these to follow more easily.

First I've got a brand new page on the website "About Botanical Art and Artists on Facebook" The aim of this page is to create an index of all those people and organisations that have a Facebook Page. It's not yet finished but it's already got a lot of content.

The second is that I've just created a brand NEW Facebook Page associated with this website. Its URL is https://www.facebook.com/botanicalartandartists and it's called (unsurprisingly) Botanical Art and Artists

This complements the recently created Twitter account (the URL for this is https://twitter.com/botanicartists) and the creation of this blog.

It means that I can share more information online without irritating those who are not interested in botanical art!

I'll continue to write about major events on "Making A Mark (such as the upcoming RHS Botanical Art Show) but lots of information about other exhibitions, events and the activities of societies, groups, courses and artists will now be carried by the social media associated with this website.

If you'd like to follow this website and the information shared you can:

Subscribe to this blog
Follow the Twitter account
Like the Facebook Page
or all three!

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@botanicartists is my new Twitter account

14/1/2016

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I've set up a new Twitter account https://twitter.com/botanicartists dedicated to:

specifically - all things related to this website eg new pages; major updates; new features, new blog posts
more generally - botanical art, artists, education and art societies
all NEW things related to botanical art and illustration e.g. new exhibitions of botanical art, new courses and new websites

PLUS

on the spot photos of events
photos of plants I don't know the names of! #whatsthisplant?

Having a dedicated Twitter account for botanical art means I can retweet so much more than I can from a general art blog!

So I'm having a happy morning finding Twitter accounts to follow - so I can retweet the interesting tweets I find on them!

If I've not followed you yet it might be because I don't realise you have an account! Please note I'm intending to only following accounts mainly or wholly dedicated to botanical and/or natural history art plus botanical gardens and relevant organisations e.g. botanical art societies.

Do you have any suggestions of really good Twitter accounts for Botanical Art and/or people or organisations to follow?

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