NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

Two NEW exhibitions at Kew (Oct 2023 - April 24)

16/10/2023

Two new exhibitions open at the end of this week at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew

Mat Colishaw - Petrichor - which includes premieres of new artwork
Young Botanical Artist - following the competition held by the Shirley Sherwood Collection in liaison with Kew Gardens.

You can find summaries of both below. I'll be writing reviews of both after I've seen them.

The exhibitions open on 20th October 2023 and continue until 7th April 2024.

Mat Colishaw - Petrichor

Mat Colishaw is a 57 year old English artist who works in photography and video. His work includes the creation of digital artworks using NFT and AI. He became well known when his work first surfaced as part of the Young British Artists group in the late 80s.

The Petrichor exhibition at Kew will dominate Galleries 1-5 and

showcases new commissions alongside existing works,
draws on an array of evocative imagery from the natural world.
includes sculptural installations, using a variety of pioneering techniques to explore the relationship between the natural world, art history, and how representations of nature in art can impact the way in which we see the world around us.

You can also see more about the Petrichor exhibition on his website.

“Bringing Mat Collishaw’s innovative work to the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art is hugely exciting, and this exhibition promises to be an evocative and wonderfully unique experience, unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the gallery before. Drawing inspiration from the natural world and the tradition of botanical art, Mat’s use of cutting-edge technology alongside the innovations of the past makes this exhibition a tantalising prospect for visitors to Kew this autumn.”
Maria Devaney, Galleries and Exhibition Leader at RBG Kew

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Video Tour of "Plants of the Qur’ān"

11/6/2023

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Below you can find a 25 minute Video Tour which I filmed with Sue Wickison in the exhibition of "Plants of the Qur’ān", her collection of 30 botanical paintings currently on display at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.

The Video I've made of that tour has now been uploaded to YouTube (and can be viewed below the page break below). In it Sue Wickison introduces a number of the larger paintings in the exhibition. It's particularly relevant to:

all those botanical art fans who cannot get to Kew to see the exhibition
all those interested in this significant ethnobotanical project who would like to hear more about
- her 30 large botanical illustrations covering the 25 plants highlighted in the Qur’ān;
- how they were developed as part of a project over a period of years
- features of individual paintings
- interesting stories about finding the plants - and why it's always best to work from botanical specimens collected in the field.

HOW WE DID THE TOUR

When the exhibition of botanical illustrations by Sue Wickison opened at Kew I visited it on three consecutive days - for two previews and then this video!

The third day was the morning before the exhibition opened to the public. The people who run the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art had very kindly agreed to open the gallery to Sue and me so we could make a video tour of the exhibition while Sue was in England.

Our plan was essentially that it should be a tour of the exhibition -pure and simple. However there is no script she and I are having a conversation which I'm filming on my iPhone as we move around Galleries 1 and 2.

You can

EITHER view the video via the link below
OR visit the YouTube website where you can then opt to view it at different (larger) sizes

The better the device you watch it on, the more you will appreciate the nature of this project and the work involved. As Sue says in the video, some of the paintings took hundreds of hours to research, develop and paint.

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Three New Exhibitions at Kew Gardens announced

22/3/2023

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On the 1st April 2023, three new exhibitions open at The Shirley Sherwood Gallery in Kew Gardens:

The Wonderful World of Water Plants - botanical art and illustrations
Plants of the Qu'ran - a series of 25 botanical paintings by Sue Wickison
All the Flowers Are for Me - two installations by Anila Quayyum Agha

Brief descriptions of each are below.

The exhibitions are on from 1 April to Sunday 17 September 2023.

The Wonderful World of Water Plants

This exhibition in Galleries 5 and 6 comprises botanical art about plants that live their lives in water. It includes artwork from the Shirley Sherwood Collection about world-class water lilies, lavish lotuses, fascinating ferns and sensational sea grapes! ⁠

I'll be highlighting the botanical artists whose work is in this exhibition when I review it. I'm certainly expecting to see artwork by Beverley Allen, Pandora Sellars, Phansakdi Chakkaphak, Katherine Manisco and Lucy Smith.

Plants of the Qu'ran (Gallery 1 and 2)

The top half of my invitation to the Private View

sGalleries 1 and 2 will provide a world premiere of a newly completed series of 26 botanical paintings about the Plants of The Qur’an by Sue Wickison - plus a showcase of preliminary drawings and a video about the project (see below).

In search of accurate reference for the plants mentioned in the Holy Qur’ān, Sue has travelled to a number of countries including the UAE from the Empty Quarter in Abu Dhabi, into the deserts in Sharjah and to remote mountain farms in Oman to see heritage plants that have been grown for generations.

Developed in collaboration with Kew Botanist Dr Shahina Ghazanfar, this unique exhibition highlights the cultural, agricultural and botanical significance of a variety of plants referenced in the Qur’an.

Prior to moving to New Zealand, Sue Wickison was a botanical illustrator working for Kew for nine years on a variety of publications and has achieved a number of notable achievements - including this one.

Sue is also doing a talk about the project as part of Julia Tricket Talks on 27th April. I'm also personally looking forward to meeting up with Sue again very soon and having a long chat with her about this project and exhibition - and a few other things....

REFERENCE:

All the Flowers Are for Me

The large Gallery 3 has an exhibition of contemporary art which showcases two stunning pieces by the Pakistani-American contemporary artist Anila Quayyum Agha

Anila Quayyum Agha (b. Lahore, Pakistan) received her BFA from the National College of Arts, Lahore and an MFA from the University of North Texas.

All the Flowers are for Me is a large, laser-cut steel cube suspended from the ceiling which is inspired by patterns used in Islamic art and architecture. This will fill the gallery space with elaborate floor-to-ceiling shadow patterns - as you can see if you click the link in the title of the piece.

Stealing Moments (After Morris and Dürer), I and II, is a new work. It is receiving its UK premiere at Kew Gardens. This wall-mounted piece, constructed from stainless steel, is inspired by Great Piece of Turf , a watercolour by the pioneering botanical artist Albrecht Dürer. It is intended to demonstrate the constant evolution of botanical art forms, and highlights how traditional botanical painting remains a source of inspiration for contemporary art.

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UPDATE: Young Botanical Artist Competition - deadline extended

26/11/2022

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This is a SUMMARY of the UPDATES relating to the Young Botanical Artist Competition introduced by Dr Shirley Sherwood in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. I've been getting quite a few queries from people interested in the competition and felt the need to summarise

the changes since the competition was first announced.
the frequently asked questions answered - and where to go if you have any other query

So this is an UPDATE about what's happened since the competition was introduced:

on this webpage Young Botanical Artist Competition on the Shirley Sherwood website
this blog post Young Botanical Artist Competition 2022: Call for Entries on the Botanical Art and Artists website.

What's changed?

Artwork: Jessica Shepherd, ‘Giant Leaf Poplar Tree’, 900 x 1260, Watercolour.

In summary, the CHANGES are as follows :

the deadline for entries from Young Artists has been EXTENDED to April 30th 2023
those artists whose work is selected for the exhibition will now be notified by 30th June 2023
40 selected artworks will be displayed in an exhibition in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery from October 2023.

This is what it says in the announcement on the Shirley Sherwood Collection Facebook Page.

In collaboration with Kew Gardens, we’ve decided to dedicate an entire wing of the Shirley Sherwood Gallery to our #YoungBotanicalArtist competition. More space means more artworks so we’ve extended our deadline to April 30th, 2023. Shortlisted artists will be informed by June 30th and 40 selected artworks will be displayed in the gallery from October onwards.

This is a unique opportunity to make your mark as a botanical artist and we encourage you to be as creative as you can within our theme of ‘TREES’. Check out our website for inspiration – you’ll find over 1,000 of the world’s best artworks all in one place.

We’re inviting young artists from the ages of 16-18 and 19-25 to enter our competition. If you turned 26 between our original deadline of November 30th, 2022 and our new deadline, your application will still be eligible.

The winning artist from each age group will receive £750 and the two runners-up £250 along with an art supplies bundle donated by Seawhite of Brighton.
To read more about the competition and apply, visit our website: https://shirleysherwood.com/YoungBotanicalArtist

Please also note

The artist's age on the deadline date - April 30th 2023 - should determine which age category they submit within. Artists who turned 26 between November 30th 2022 (our original competition deadline) and April 30th 2023 are still eligible to apply.

Do you have a further query?

I want to emphasise all further queries about the competition should be directed to the Shirley Sherwood website - see the bottom of the page for how to do this (see below). Plus there is a FAQs section which provides responses to frequently asked questions

Do you have a question not covered above?, please contact us.

The queries answered in the FAQs section currently cover:

Who can enter the competition?
Can I enter a piece that is off-theme?
Does it matter if I am an artist living outside the UK?
Can I use digital media?
Can I submit more than one artwork?
Will I make profit from sales if my work is printed on to merchandise?

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Video: Illustrating the night time blooming water lilies

5/7/2022

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Lucy Smith at her desk in Kew - with a giant water lily bud she's just dissected

(below) Further to yesterday's post A NEW Giant Water Lily - discovered and illustrated by Lucy Smith, some of you may be interested in video of some of the challenges of illustrating water lilies

Channel 5 have been collaborating with Kew Gardens to create an excellent series called Kew Gardens - A Year in Bloom which aired for the first time last year 2021. It's about the work of the gardens - and the people who work within it - who of course include botanical illustrators.

Episode 3 included a section on the work of Lucy Smith, one of Kew's freelance botanical illustrators, and the challenges she has faced when trying to get specimens of giant water lilies to draw and then paint.

This YouTube video (below) - posted by Channel 5, is has been compiled from extracts from Episode 3 of their series and is called "Trying to catch the night-time bloom of the Waterlilies"

In it you see:

the Waterlily House at Kew Gardens - completed in 1852 and designed specifically to showcase the giant Amazon waterlily (Victoria amazonica)
the Kew Herbarium (where seven million preserved vascular plant specimens are kept) and the Library
Lucy Smith at her desk in the building dissecting a very fresh giant water lily bud - being careful to avoid the prickles - and then explaining how it works for the purposes of reproduction

and here's the bud - and you can see how big it is from Lucy's hand behind it!

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A NEW Giant Water Lily - described and illustrated by Lucy Smith

4/7/2022

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew have today announced the publication of a paper about the discovery of Victoria boliviana a brand NEW Giant Water Lily. Moreover it is now officially recognised to be the LARGEST in the world.

Oddly, the newly-named Victoria boliviana has actually been sitting in Kew’s Herbarium for 177 years - alongside Victoria amazonica and Victoria cruziania..

A multi-disciplinary team of Kew experts - spearheaded by Kew's tropical horticulturist Carlos Magdalena and botanical illustrator Lucy T. Smith - have now revealed the plant to be new to science – the first giant water lily "discovery" in more than a century..

Lucy and Carlos with Victoria boliviana in the Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew Gardens

The paper’s authors decided to name the species in honour of Bolivian partners and the South American home of the waterlily where it grows in the aquatic ecosystems of Llanos de Moxos.
With flowers that turn from white to pink and bearing spiny petioles, V. boliviana is now the largest waterlily in the world, with leaves growing as wide as 3 metres in the wild.
The current record for the largest species is held by La Rinconada Gardens in Bolivia where leaves reached 3.2 metres.

The announcement is of particular interest to botanical illustrators for two reasons:

the discovery was stimulated by Lucy Smith's major personal project to illustrate the giant water lilies at Kew - after she had illustrated the smallest waterlily in the world.
Lucy provided the initial important evidence to prompt a major scientific investigation by a team of people (see below) after she demonstrated that one of the waterlilies she was investigating, documenting and recording was actually different to the two known giant waterlilies, as illustrated by Walter Hood Fitch in the 19th century.

You can read Lucy's account of the project in her new blog post on the topic - which she has been writing for the last four years - and provides the botanical illustrator's perspective on this amazing story of plant discovery - see Victoria boliviana - a new species of Giant Waterlily | Lucy Smith Blog (4th July 2022)

Delimitation of the Giant Water Lily Victoria:
the Scientific Project and Article

The title and authors of the original research article "Revised Species Delimitation in the Giant Water Lily Genus Victoria (Nymphaeaceae) Confirms a New Species and Has Implications for Its Conservation"

So it came to pass that, this morning at 5am, a new scientific paper Revised Species Delimitation in the Giant Water Lily Genus Victoria (Nymphaeaceae) Confirms a New Species and Has Implications for Its Conservation was published in the journal "Frontiers in Plant Science".

This paper lays out the evidence for:

the discovery of the first giant waterlily of the Victoria species in over a century - to be called Victoria boliviana
the declaration of a NEW largest waterlily in the world.

Young Botanical Artist Competition 2022: Call for Entries

30/6/2022

There's a NEW Botanical Artist Competition for Young Botanical Artists - and this is about the Call for Entries.

The Young Botanical Artist Competition 2022 is being sponsored by Dr Shirley Sherwood in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

We believe there is significant talent among the 16-25 age group with a wealth of exciting work to be uncovered. This is a crucial moment to engage with the ever-growing genre of botanical art – the scientific capacity of botanical paintings and drawings to document plants and fungi is particularly vital in contemporary society as we work to preserve our planet’s biodiversity.

[ UPDATE: The Deadline for Entries has been extended to 30 April 2023 - see my UPDATE post UPDATE: Young Botanical Artist Competition - deadline extended ]

Summary of who/what/how to enter

Below is a summary of the "need to know" facts about the competition for those interested in entering. This covers:

Details of who can enter and what they can enter
Selection and judging
Prizes

PLUS Resources on this website

There are a few very relevant matters which are missing at the moment (eg entry form) - but I'm sure this will be fixed quickly.

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