NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

Gustavo Surlo wins First Prize in Margaret Flockton Award 2023

20/8/2023

Gustavo Surlo has won the First in the Margaret Flockton Award 2023. This award is very highly prized within the scientific botanical illustration community.

The Second Prize has been awarded to Juan Luis Castillo.

The Margaret Flockton Award is judged and hosted by the Botanic Gardens of Sydney’s botanical illustrators Catherine Wardrop and Lesley Elkan.

37 artists from 18 countries have been selected for the 2023 exhibition at the Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan until Friday 20 October 2023. A total of 54 entries have been judged and 29 finalists will be exhibited on-site.

The images of illustrations selected for the exhibition can be seen in the Margaret Flockton Award 2023 album on Flickr

The Criteria used to judge the Award are as follows:

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

First Prize: Gustavo Surlo - Wedelia sp. nov. (daisy)

Gustavo Surlo has won the AUS$5,000 First Prize in the 20th Margaret Flockton Awards (2023) for his illustration of his drawing of the newly found Wedelia species which is a member of the daisy family. Last year he was one of the artists who was Highly Commended.

Wedelia, a member of the daisy family by Gustavo Surlo

Gustavo's pieces show the Wedelia sp. nov. species with strength while capturing the delicate surface of the plant's textures. He has skilfully composed the illustration. The subtle use of lines and bars gives a sense of scale. We can understand the plant's role in its habitat and see its minute hairs and glands on the leaf surface. Lesley Elkan.

ABOUT GUSTAVO SURLO

graduated in Biological Sciences from the Federal University of Bahia
subsequently became a Margaret Mee Scholar at Kew in 2018.
He is a botanical illustrator and intern at the plant tissue culture laboratory of the UFBA Institute of Biology.

His Instagram post about his illustrationindicates his pleasure with his win. I recommend he now get himself a website!

I am immensely grateful to the organizers of this incredible initiative, which I have followed with delight for several years. I also thank the researchers who very kindly allowed the submission of the illustration and helped to understand the structures. Today an old dream comes true with Margaret Flockton Award

Second Prize: Phoenix canariensis by Juan Luis Castillo, Spain

The second prize is awarded to Phoenix canariensis (Canary Island date palm) by Juan Luis Castillo (Spain)

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Klei Sousa wins First Prize in Margaret Flockton Award 2022

25/10/2022

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Klei Sousa has won the First Prize in the 18th Margaret Flockton Award 2022. The award comes with $5,000 but is most prized for its highly prestigious nature within the scientific botanical illustration community.

Hippeastrum sp. nov. by Klei Sousa (Brazil)

An outstanding result for a long-time entrant in the MFA. Delicately rendered in ink on board with Klei’s trade-mark restraint, the perfect line and stipple had the judges straining to find a flaw (which they didn’t). The crucial white halos around foreground features help delineate form, avoiding confusion when layering. With every essential aspect comprehensively rendered in fine stipple, and with zero superfluous information, Klei brings together scientific accuracy and an experienced artistic sensibility in this beautiful plate.

This post covers: (in order)

About the Award - why it is prestigious and what's important in a winning illustration
About the two prizewinners and three artists whose illustrations were highly commended PLUS Judges comments
About the Exhibition at the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney
How you can see the images online - and view the video presentation

You can also

REVIEW my dedicated page for The Margaret Flockton Award for Excellence in Scientific Botanical Illustration
see all the selected entries on Flickr in the RBG Sydney Flickr Album Margaret Flockton Award 2022
view the YouTube video about the Award (below).

The Margaret Flockton Award

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Call for Entries: "The Art of Botanical Illustration" at RBG Victoria

20/5/2022

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This year sees the 16th Biennial 'Art of Botanical Illustration' (TABI) Exhibition at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria in Melbourne.

This is one of the most prestigious botanical art exhibitions in Australia
Entry is open to international botanical artists.
It takes place at the same time as 7th Botanic Gardens Congress and will be an event which is part of the Friends 40th anniversary celebrations

Below you can find out more about the official Call for Entries for the Exhibition which will open on 16th September 2022. The deadline for entries is 1st August 2022.

My version reorganises the information for artists provided to make it rather easier to grasp some of the critical issues which will help you with decision-making about whether or not to enter. There's a little surprise about the cost for those not resident in Victoria...

Exhibition

The exhibition will take a hybrid format this year - with ALL artworks exhibited in both:

a physical exhibition held at Domain House, Melbourne
a virtual exhibition online.

It's considered that this hybrid approach will help capture a wide audience and in turn provide greater exposure to the artworks of nationally and internationally based botanical artists.

Venue: Domain House, Royal Botanic Gardens, Victoria
Virtual: Exhibition: - link to be provided at a later date
Dates: 16 September through to 2 October 2022

TABI 2022 will coincide with the 7th Global Botanic Gardens Congress (26th – 30th September 2022), which will be hosted by the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria , RBGV, ( https://www.7gbgc.org/).

The theme of the Congress is Influence and Action: Botanic Gardens as Agents of Change with a particular focus on the response of Botanic Gardens to climate change, including plant conservation and climate resilience.

Call for Entries

The Friends of the Royal Botanical Gardens Victoria organise host the exhibition and organise the Call for Entries. They are inviting entries for the exhibition from all botanical artists.

You can find out more on:

the TABI 2022 page.
Information for Artists - which I'm summarising below.

The Selection Process will be based on DIGITAL images (i.e. no need to send your artwork to Melbourne) and the Information for Artists provides useful guidelines for how best to deliver these.

TABI 2022: Information for Artists

1. SELECTION CRITERIA

The artwork must adhere to the following selection criteria:

It must provide an accurate representation of the form and botany of the chosen subject.
The characteristics of the species or variety must be adequately conveyed.
The representation should be an artistically pleasing, balanced and a considered work of art.
It must be identified and named accurately according to standard botanical practices.
It must have been completed since TABI 2020.

The artworks selected for TABI 2022 must be both scientifically accurate and artistically pleasing. Each artwork is carefully selected against strict selection criteria by a panel of three professional judges, including a botanist and an experienced artist, to ensure the highest standards are met.
Information for Artists (Section 8: Selection process)

2. WHO CAN ENTER:

The Information for Artists could be less than somewhat opaque on this topic. Or maybe just a lot more transparent?

Essentially

anybody can submit entries
only those who are Friends of the Royal Botanic Garden Victoria - in a financial sense - can have their work hung in the exhibition. (See "Cost of Submission" below)

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Botanic Endeavour: RBG Sydney Florilegium Society celebrates the Banks and Solander Collections

3/5/2022

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Back in 2020, one of the significant botanical exhibitions of the year was that of "Botanic Endeavour" - in Sydney. This was the second exhibition - in association with the publication of a new book (see below) - by the Florilegium Society of the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney (RBGS).

This, of course was the year, when public spaces were being locked down and then reopening and then locking down again. At the same time that people were being careful about where they travelled and how and which public spaces they visited. It really wasn't a great year for art exhibitions.

My recollection is that the planned exhibition was cancelled. Then in November 2020, a webinar was held to talk about the second project, the book and the paintings

It's really pleasing therefore to hear that there's going to be another chance to see Botanic Endeavour: The Florilegium Society celebrates the Banks and Solander Collections. This announcement feels like it provides another opportunity for all those who were playing it safe, not travelling and not going to exhibitions in 2020 - or 2021.

The Society will present an exhibition of 50 recent botanical paintings linking the historic Banks’ and Solander specimens held in the National Herbarium of NSW with the Living Collection of the three Gardens. This project was created to mark the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s voyage in the Endeavour in 2020.

Curated by Colleen Morris, the focus is on these historic specimens; drawing attention to the time and place of their collection, their history and inviting reflection on their significance to science, to the Indigenous peoples, to those collecting them and to the Gardens now.

Some of the newly digitised Banks’ and Solander collection images will be displayed along with more treasures from the Daniel Solander Library including some of the Banks’ Florilegium plates and his specimen cabinet.

Details of the exhibition are below:

Venue: The Lion Gate Lodge, Royal Botanic Garden Sydney
Dates: Saturday 7th – Sunday 22nd May 2022
Hours: 10am - 4pm daily
Cost: FREE

Public transport is recommended as parking is limited.

The majority of the Banks and Solander specimens represented in the new works were collected at Botany Bay and the remainder from several locations in Queensland. Fresh plant material was sourced in many ways; with the co-operation of the botanic gardens in Cambridge, Oxford and Kew in the UK and a specialist nursery in California as well as from the three Gardens of the Trust in Australia. One artist sourced seeds from Western Australia and grew them in Cambridge; another painted from plants on the Amahlongwana River in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. In Australia, some material was obtained from specialist nurseries and grown on at home; naturally, many grow in Sydney and the areas of collection in Queensland.
The Florilegium at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney by Dianne Sutherland (one of the artists)

Botanic Endeavour - the book

The First Book by RBGS Florilegium Society (published 2016)

The second book - Botanic Endeavour - published 2020

Those visiting the exhibition will have a chance to buy the Botanic Endeavour book. Those living further afield, who would like a copy can find out more about it - and the first book - on my page about the Florilegium Societies.
Just scroll down until you get to Australasia and The Florilegium Society at The Royal Botanic Gardens & Domain Trust.

READ MORE NEWS ABOUT BOTANICAL ART AND ARTISTS

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Esmee Winkel wins Margaret Flockton Award 2021

7/6/2021

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Notoleptopus decaisnei, Esmee Winkel, The Netherlands

Esmee Somers Winkel has won the First Prize in the 17th Margaret Flockton Award 2021. The award comes with $5,000 but is most prized for its highly prestigious nature within the scientific botanical illustration community.

Esmee is a a professional scientific illustrator working in the Netherlands. This First prize follows on from

the Second Prize she won in 2017,
the Jill Smythies Award (2014) awarded by the Linnean Society and
her three RHS Gold Medals (2013, 2016 and 2018).

This post covers: (in order)

About the Award - why it is prestigiousâ€‹ and what's important in a winning illustration.
â€‹About the two prizewinners and three artists whose illustrations were highly commended PLUS Judges comments
About the Exhibition at the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney
How you can see the images online - and view the video presentation.â€‹

The Margaret Flockton Award

Margaret Flockton Award is unique amongst international art awards, focusing exclusively on contemporary scientific botanical illustration, as distinct from botanical art RBG Sydney Flickr Album Margaret Flockton Award 2021

The Margaret Flockton Award is specifically about scientific botanical illustration. It's prestigious because it is the ONLY award dedicated to the excellence and expertise demonstrated by those who produce botanical illustrations to an exactly scientific standard for botany and botanists

As a result, entries are typically:

submitted by professional botanical illustrators - or those aspiring to be one.
related to plates produced for the record and for scientific botanical publications.

This competition and exhibition is International. 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.

REVIEW my dedicated page for The Margaret Flockton Award for Excellence in Scientific Botanical Illustration

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.

Reproducability is extremely important, because the nature of our work is that it is reproduced so anything too delicate can be lost on reduction.
â€‹Composition will usually be the thing that wins a work. If you can make a composition sing in terms of the way it tells the story of the plant you're doing well.
Comments by Lesley Elkan from the Facebook Live Event

While other awards will look for accurate interpretation and portrayal plus technical and artistic merit, this is the only award which specifically considers illustration from the perspective of the scope for reproduction in scientific publications (i.e. the whole purpose of the illustration is to communicate to a wide community of interest via printed or digital matter).

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
Dr Kerry Gibbons, RBG&DT Flora Botanistâ€‹

Apparently they had 25 illustrations two days before the deadline and on the Monday morning they had 103! Next year the Judges would appreciate receiving illustrations earlier if that's at all possible! :)

About the Prizewinners

I photographed Esmee Winkel with her RHS Gold Medal scientific botanical illustrations in 2016 - just after she'd given me her best tips for cleaning Rotring technical pens!

FIRST PRIZE ($5,000) Esmee Winkel, The Netherlands - for Notoleptopus decaisnei (ink)
(see illustration at the top of this post)

Esmee's illustrated has been awarded the First Prize for its exacting skilful technique and perfectly balanced composition. The clarity of the strong line is complemented by the perfectly rendered elements, with a concise stipple techniques used only where required to convincglu describe form. Line weight is also used to describe shadows and depth. The illustration reveals the life cycle and key features of
â€‹Judge's Comments

My commentary: I'm reading that as a lot of appreciation and applause for

a "less is more" approach to botanical illustration and
demonstrable and refined expertise in the full range of available techniques!

â€‹Plus note the smart move of illustrating an Australian plant!

Esmee Winkel is a professional scientific illustrator who specialises in botanical illustration and works as a Scientific illustrator and Botanical artist for the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden and at the Hortus Botanicus, Leiden in the Netherlands.

She has previously won second prize in the Margaret Flockton Award 2017.

Other prizes she has won include

2016: the Botanical Illustrator Award for Excellence in Scientific Botanical Art from the American Society of Botanical Artists (ASBA)
2016: a second RHS Gold Medal for her display of drawings of rare and endangered orchids in 2016 (see Interviews with RHS Botanical Art Gold Medallists - from the UK and Europe - and video below)
2014: the Jill Smythies Award for excellence in botanical illustration by the Linnean Society
2013: an RHS Gold Medal in 2013 for a set of meticulous and well-designed pen and ink drawings of Leguminosae (see Interviews with RHS Botanical Art Gold Medal Winners)
2012 - a BISCOT Gold Medal in 2012

You can read more about her in About Esmee Winkel, botanical illustrator at Naturalis

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BISCOT 2019 & RBGE Florilegium at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

13/6/2019

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In this post I'm sharing photos of:

BISCOT medal winning artists with their paintings - at the BISCOT Exhibition at Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh (RBGE)
paintings for the NEW RBGE Florilegium

You can see the exhibition of paintings

AT: The John Hope Gateway, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Arboretum Place, EH3 5NZ
UNTIL: 20 June 2019

About Botanical Images Scotia (BISCOT)

BISCOT is an acronym for "Botanical Images Scotia". It's an annual international exhibition in Scotland of contemporary botanical illustration which

promotes excellence in botanical painting and illustration.
gives both national and international artists an opportunity to exhibit in Edinburgh and presents new and original botanical work.

Each exhibitor creates a display of SIX artworks - and the exhibition is open to and attracts international entrants. In this respect BISCOT is the Scottish equivalent of the RHS Botanical Art Show in London - and is regarded as the top show in Scotland in terms of awards and prestige.

Below are photos of artists with their paintings after the exhibition transferred from Gardening Scotland to the RBGE John Hope Gateway last week.

Gold Medals

Fran Thomas (Scotland, UK) - Scottish Native Cladonia Lichens
Sansanee Deekrajang (Thailand) - Tropical Palm Trees
Marianne Hazlewood (Scotland, UK) - Arisaema biseasonal
Simonetta Occhipinti (Italy) - The Golden Fruits

Fran Thomas (Scotland, UK) - Scottish Native Cladonia Lichens (GOLD Medal)

Fran Thomas GM (Biscot) - Fran paints native Scottish plants. In 2017 she also won a Gold Medal at BISCOT 2017 and the Mary Mendum Medal for the Best Exhibit - for her watercolour paintings of "Native plants of the coasts and islands of the Firth of Forth". She also has two RHS Silver Gilt Medals.

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BISCOT Medal Winners 2019

2/6/2019

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Medals and awards were made on Friday at the BISCOT display at Gardening Scotland in Edinburgh.

BISCOT is an acronym for "Botanical Images Scotia". It's annual exhibition of contemporary botanical illustration which

promotes excellence in botanical painting and illustration.
gives both national and international artists an opportunity to exhibit in Edinburgh and presents new and original botanical work.

Gardening Scotland (sponsored by the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society) (31 May - 2 June)
the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) - John Hope Gateway (5-20 June 2019)

A view of part of BISCOT at Gardening Scotland

The judges look at the individual quality of the paintings/drawings and the way they look together as a complete exhibit; and the following points are considered

The depiction of the plants should be botanically accurate
Show a high level of draughtsmanship and painting skills
Both the composition of each painting and the complete exhibit are noted
All written names, including Latin names, must be accurate and well presented
The mounts are appropriate to the exhibit,
The overall design of the exhibit enhances the paintings
Paintings have a themed subject

Below is a list of the medal and award winners and images of some of the exhibits. Links to the website or Facebook Page are embedded in the name of the artist.

Best in Show

Sansanee Deekrajang and her exhibit of Tropical Palm Trees which won a Gold Medal and the Mary Mendum Award for an exhibit of exceptional merit

Best In Show - Sansanee Deekrajang (Thailand) - Cyrtostachys Renda
The Mary Mendum Medal Mary Mendum Award for an Exhibit of Exceptional Quality - Sansanee Deekrajang - Tropical Palm Trees

Note: the Mary Mendum Award is not awarded every year i.e. it's only awarded when there is an outstanding botanical art exhibit - which excels in terms of both botanical information and artistic quality.

I first met Sansanee at the RHS Botanical Art Show in 2016 when her RHS Gold Medal-winning exhibit of Tropical Fruits astounded very many visitors. Sansanee is renowned for her complex and colourful compositions of the scientific detail of her subject. Once seen never forgotten!

Sansanee comes form Thailand and was born in Bangkok in 1980. She has also spent time living in Lothian in Scotland - hence her awareness of this exhibition. She has a degree of art and has specialised in fine art printmaking in the past. She taught herself how to create botanical art and won an RHS Gold Medal for her watercolour paintings of tropical plants in 2016. She has a particular talent for producing very bright paintings full of content with excellent compositions.

Sansanee is also exhibiting at the 16th International Exhibition of the Hunt Institute in the Autumn 2019 and planning to exhibit at the Korea Botanical Art Award exhibition. She's also planning to be back at RHS in two years time - in 2021.

Gold Medals

Fran Thomas (Scotland, UK) - Scottish Native Cladonia Lichens
Sansanee Deekrajang (Thailand) - Tropical Palm Trees
Marianne Hazlewood (Scotland, UK) - Arisaema biseasonal
Simonetta Occhipinti (Italy) - The Golden Fruits

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