NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

EXHIBITION: Flora of Southeast Asia

30/10/2022

Flora of Southeast Asia is an International Botanical Art Exhibition which opens on 15th November at the Singapore Botanic Gardens.

It is a regional juried exhibition and a unique collaboration between FOUR botanical art societies / groups in Southeast Asia. It has been co-organised by Botanical Art Society (Singapore) (BASS) and the Singapore Botanic Gardens, in their first-ever collaboration with:

Indonesian Society of Botanical Artists (IDSBA)
Philippine Botanical Art Society (PhilBAS) and
Thai Botanical Artists (THBA).

BOTANICAL ART SOCIETIES / GROUPS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

It struck me while writing this post that all these groups and societies have been set up in the last few years. It's an indication of how a much broader range of countries in Asia (beyond Japan, China and Korea) are now much more active in the creation of botanical art and associated exhibitions.

IDSBA was officially founded at Bogor in June 2017 by Eunike Nugruho and Jenny Kartawinata
I think I'm right in saying Thai Botanic Artists formed as an informal group in response to the call for the Worldwide Exhibition of Botanical Art in 2018
BASS was founded in June 2019. The Society now has members from Singapore, across Asia and North America.
I'm not sure when the Philippine Botanical Art Society formed - but can see from their Facebook Page that they've been very active for three years - since September 2019.

SCOPE OF "FLORA OF SOUTHEAST ASIA" EXHIBITION

120 artworks featuring 115 plant species by 85 artists have been selected to be on display throughout SBG. (This was the very well organised Call for Entries website).

This exhibition showcases the native plant diversity of Southeast Asia with 80 original botanical artworks in the Botanical Art Gallery and 40 additional facsimiles in the People’s Gallery outdoor exhibit spaces of the gardens.
A wide variety of Southeast Asian native plants such as orchids, shrubs, trees, wetland species, epiphytes and fungi are depicted in watercolour, graphite, colour pencil, acrylic and ink.

The subject matter of "Flora of Southeast Asia is

Any flora native to Southeast Asia, including fungi, lichen and/or algae.
A plant is considered native if it has occurred naturally in the Southeast Asian region, ecosystem, or habitat without human introduction.

EXHIBITION DETAILS

Venue: Singapore Botanic Gardens:

80 artworks at Botanical Art Gallery: House No. 7, Gallop Extension, Singapore Botanic Gardens
- Open daily 9am - 6pm (closed on last Thursday of the month)
40 Additional Artworks / Facsimile Prints can be found at: People's Gallery exhibit spaces of Singapore Botanic Gardens, at
- the Tanglin Gate,
- Nassim Gate,
- Bukit Timah Gate and
- the Green Pavilion at Botany Centre

Dates: 15 November 2022 – 15 February 2023
Admission: FREE

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Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #4: Artists from Asia

16/11/2019

This is the fourth in my series of posts about artists who have artwork in the new exhibition Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens relates to Asia. The artists are from China, India, Japan, Korea, Philippines, and Thailand

Three posts in my series of SIX posts about the artists in the exhibition have been published previously:

Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #1: British Artists
Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #2: North and Latin American Artists (USA, Canada Brazil and Mexico)
Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #3: European Artists

Two more posts (to come) relate to:

#5 artists from South Africa
#6 artists from Australia and New Zealand

Mieko Ishikawa GM (2006) with her very famous painting of "Acorns from Brunei" and Flowering Cherries Prunus Pendula" owned by Shirley Sherwood. (Pictured in the Flora Japonica exhibition in 2016)

The exhibition celebrates 30 years of the Shirley Sherwood Collection - and is being exhibited in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew Gardens - which opened 11 years ago and has now received well over 1 million visitors.

The exhibition opened today and continues until until 15 March 2020. (note the opening and last entry times at the end)

I'm expecting it will get a lot more visitors with this new exhibition which comprises artwork from Shirley Sherwood's Collection of Contemporary Botanical Art which is the largest private collection in the world - with more than 1,000 artworks.

Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art
#4: Asian Artists

Below you can find:
the names of artists whose work is displayed - with a link to their website embedded in their name (or a link to a dedicated page on my website for some of the deceased artists)
a short profile of each artist - focusing on their achievements
the names of the plants in their artwork which has been selected for the exhibition. Where plants have been featured in previous books by Dr Sherwood this is noted next to the name.

CHINA

Jinyong Feng
b.1925. Taught most of the contemporary botanical illustrators in China. He has also exhibited widely including at the Hunt and the Missouri Botanical Gardens. He is retired from a senior position at the Botanical Institute in Beijing.

Camellia chekiangoleosa 1994 (Contemporary Botanical Artists)
Camellia chrysantha (The Art of Plant Evolution)

Tai-li Zhang
b.1938. Worked as a botanical artist all her life. She trained at the School of Botanical Painting, Institute of Botany, Academia Sinica in Beijing from 1958-1960. She then worked for the next 35 years at the department of plant taxonomy in the Institute of Botany. She has exhibited her work in many exhibitions in China and also in Australia, the Missouri Botanical Gardens in the USA and the Everard Read Gallery in South Africa. She also exhibited in the 6th International Exhibition at the Hunt Institute. Over 1,000 of her drawings were reproduced in Flora Reipublicae Popularis Sinae.

Paulownia elongata (Contemporary Botanical Artists)
Maidenhair Tree 1994 (Contemporary Botanical Artists)

INDIA

Damodar Lal Gurjar
b. 1958. Graduated from Rajasthan School of Arts, Jaipur in 1981. His botanical artwork featured in a solo exhibition, Enduring Perfection: Paintings by Damodar Lal Gurjar, at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation in 2001. He has work included in A Passion for Plants: Contemporary Botanical Masterworks.

Nasturtium Tropaeolum (A Passion for Plants, pg 93)

Thakur Ganga (Rai Sahib) Singh (1895-1970)
Born in India. He joined the Dehra Dun Forest Institute in 1911 and served as a Senior Artist for 30 years until his retirement in 1945. In 1931 he took long leave for a year and travelled to London for formal training as an artist at the Slade School of Art. He was made Rai Sahib ( a title of honour) for his contribution to art. Court painter to Yadhavindra Singh, Maharajah of Patiala. Ganga Singh was engaged by the Maharajah in 1942 to reproduce his collected flora in watercolour drawings. He became a permanent member of His Highness' staff and painted over four hundred watercolours over a period of twenty years.

Tiger Lily Lilium lancifolium (A Passion for Plants, pg 212)

When I was a schoolgirl I visited Pakistan just after partition and spent some wonderful months exploring the Himalayas of the North West Frontier Province, close to the border with Kashmir, I will never forget the spectaucyalr drifts of delphiniums flowing down the mountains, the alpine streams and high valleys dotted with orchids and lilies. As a budding botanist I scrambled up the mountains with my pony, collecting and pressing plants, which I eventually took to Kew.
Shirley Sherwood - in her profile of Thakur (Rai Sahib) Singh in "A Passion for Plants"

List of artists exhibited in "Abundance, seed pods and autumn fruit" at Kew

9/3/2018

This post puts on record all those artists who contributed to Abundance, seed pods and autumn fruit at the The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art in Kew Gardens before it ends on Sunday March 11th 2018.

The exhibition is open this weekend 10am to 5pm (last admission 4.45pm). It includes artwork by botanical artists and illustrators from Australia, Brazil, France, Italy, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, UK and USA.

Left: Custard Apple by Álvaro Xavier Núñez; next Pomegranates by Ann Schweizer; Right: two paintings of the Ivy Gourd and Bitter Gourd by Phansakdi Chakkaphak

Like many of the smaller exhibitions in the side corridors of the gallery Abundance, seed pods and autumn fruit does not have a catalogue and there is also no list of artists and artworks available at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery.

However I've been given a set of the labels used for the exhibition and was able to discus the plants in the exhibition with Shirley Sherwood.

This was supposed to have been written in November last year - and here we are at the last weekend! Which will teach me not to mistake uploading images of the artists with their paintings to Facebook after the Private View with the rather longer(!) task of sorting out this type of blog post.

Explanation of the exhibition - and how dispersal occurs via wind, water, animals and explosive mechanisms

How this list of artists in the exhibition works

I did think of ordering works by methods of dispersion but that would have got very repetitive in terms of artists names!

So the way it works is like this

The list is alphabetical based on (1) the country they come from and (2) the surname of the artist.
A link to their website (if they have one) is embedded in their name. Alternatively another page has been linked to if this tells you about an artist who doesn't have a website.
an asterisk * after their name indicates they are included in my current summary of artists for the country they live in - where you can read more about them. If the artist is deceased they will be listed in 20th century Botanical Artists in the history section. Those without an asterisk will be added soon!
The name is followed by basic bio data which indicates where they were born and live
This is then followed by the title of the work. The common vernacular name is very often followed by the correct latin name in italics, (for more about naming plants see Plant Names and Botanical Latin in the Botany section on this website)
Media: All paintings are watercolour on paper unless otherwise stated.
Artwork which has been published in one of Dr Sherwood's books includes the title of the book and page number (in green) after the title
Those who have more than one artwork in the exhibition have the titles of the works bullet pointed below their names.

Some of the plants have interesting stories or names and these are also highlighted.

Names of the Artists and Titles of the Artworks

Australia

Second from left is the Idiot Fruit Idiospermum australiense painting by Betty Hinton

Betty Hinton b.1935 Gin Gin, Queensland
Betty has painted a group of 'plant dinosaurs' from the tropical forest reserve at Daintree, north of Cairns

Idiot Fruit Idiospermum australiense - gouache and watercolour on paper A Passion for Plants, pg 107 AND The Art of Plant Evolution page 74 and 75

This very ancient plant has huge and heavy seeds. It was first discovered in the nineteenth century and then "lost" again as land was cleared. The fruit is classed as very poisonous by the Aborigines. If eaten by cattle they go mad. The tree is 15 metres tall and the flowers can only be retrieved by somebody climbing the tree to the top to cut off flowering branches - which is what happened in relation to this painting.

Mali Moir GM b.1960

Ovuliferous Scale Bunya Pine Nut Araucaria bidwillii 2014 Watercolour on deer vellum

Jenny Phillips GM b.1949

Corymbia ficifolia 1998 Watercolour on vellum
Sausage Tree Kigelia africana 1999

Brazil

Far Left: Seed Pod, Cardiocrinum giganteum by Robert McNeill. Far right: Two works by by Alvaro E. X. Nunes - Cybistax antisyphilitica and Zeyheria montana

Álvaro Xavier Núñez b.1945 Annapolis, Brazil
One the best known of the contemporary Brazilian botanical artists, Álvaro specialises in painting plants from all the different ecosystems within Brazil - and has seven paintings in the exhibition.

Custard Apple Annona crassiflora 2003 The Art of Plant Evolution page 72 and 73
Cybistax antisyphilitica 2008 Old and New South American Botanical Art page 134 It's a popular Brazilian tonic in the treatment of syphilis and in yaws and its leaves are used to dye cloth blue.
Kapok Tree Ceiba speciosa 2003 Old and New South American Botanical Art page 126
Dioclea violacea 2009 Old and New South American Botanical Art page 135
Fruits of Savannah A Passion for Plants page 156 This might be described as a symphony in browns, the painting displays exquisite tonal control.
"Monkey Pot" Lecythis pisonis This plant is a tropical tree in the Brazil nut family and the fruit has a tight fitting lid which burst open when ready. The common name comes from the fact Monkeys put their hand into to retrieve the nuts. Adults learn that they need to be sparing in how many they take out at one time.
Zeyheria montana 2008 Old and New South American Botanical Art page 132

Reasons why botanical art is not selected

19/1/2018

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This post is about why botanical art does not get selected for open exhibitions with high standards for botanical accuracy.

The Organising Committee of Botanical Art Worldwide 2018 : Thailand Edition has published a list of those who have passed the FIRST stage of selection. The second stage involves selection from actual artwork rather than digital images and associated information.

Their list of those progressing to Stage 2 also very usefully list the reasons why some plants / botanical art did NOT make it to the second round.

In truth, It's a very relevant summary of many of the reasons why botanical art frequently fails to get selected for botanical art exhibitions which ensure botanical rigour in selection. Only the native plant rationale is relevant to this particular exhibition.

Personally, I think it's a very educational listing and could usefully be studied by all students of botanical art.

So - thanks to Google Translate - here are their list of reasons.

Reasons why artworks were not selected

The Organising Committee describe the reasons as follows.

One or more of the reasons for some not being considered:

It is not native plant native to Thailand, but is imported into Thailand intentionally or unintentionally (called exotic plant). It can be found in the Encyclopaedia of Plants in Thailand. Or online media on topics such as origin, distribution, (native). Many plants are named. Not native to Thailand such as pineapple, papaya, tomatoes.
Patterns do not match botanical art.
Colours do not match reality in nature.
The size or proportion does not match the botanical accuracy.
Lack of showing the essential characteristics of the plant species, such as drawing "fruit under the leaf", but do not draw leaves.
Image composition is not complete. Or wrong from the truth
The size of the works does not meet the requirements of the rules.
Botanical name does not match plant type Or there is another message that is not valid. And appear on the picture.
The signature is too large. Or inappropriate
Draw from other photos or drawings that may not be properly licensed. There is a problem of copyright infringement.

NOTE: The image on the banner for the Botanical Art Worldwide 2018: Thailand Edition is by a watercolour painting by Sansanee Deekrajang of Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn. also known as the 'sacred lotus'. This is the Kew species profile

You can read about Sansanee and see more of her work in my blog post Interviews with RHS Botanical Art Gold Medallists 2016 - from Asia

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Phansakdi Chakkapak - Contemporary Thai Botanical Artist

13/6/2016

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Phansakdi Chakkapak is a botanical artist from Thailand who paints in watercolour. His colours are typically tropical and sensational.

I had the pleasure of meeting him last summer at the Jonathan Cooper Park Walk Gallery in Chelsea. (see my blog post about 25th anniversary exhibition of the Shirley Sherwood Collection)

Shirley Sherwood with Phansakdi Chakkapak at Jonathan Cooper Park Walk Gallery

Thursday 16th June is the last day of another exhibition - this time a solo exhibition of his work called 100 Botanical Beauties which also helps mark the 100th anniversary of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. It's been running since March when Dr. Sherwood visited him in March 2016, just before it opened as his first guest of honour.

Flyer for his latest exhibition

Phansakdi Chakkapak has been working as a freelance botanical artist since 1999 and he has created a lot of paintings and has a lot of collectors. Most of his collectors are from Thailand - however Shirley Sherwood has bought several of his works and these are now being seen on a regular basis at the gallery at Kew.

Anybody serious about building a collection of botanical art should take a very long look at his paintings.

You can read more about him

in the section about botanical artists from Thailand on my page on this website about Contemporary Asian Botanical Artists
on his website www.phansakdi.com. It contains advice on watercolour technique - which I have reproduced below. It's very simple and obviously very effective!

“Don’t pencil-draw; don’t sketch.”

This was Master Chakrabhand’s first advice to me when I painted white roses in a glass vase in watercolour on September 21st, 1991.
I followed his advice and it has remained my modus operandi.

Phansakdi Chakkapak

Video of his paintings

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you watch this 5 minute video of his paintings fullscreen in HD.

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