This post is all about some of the KEY THEMES of this year's exhibits in the RHS Botanical Art Show - particularly those which, relative to the judging criteria, displayed:
It should be emphasised that all those who get to exhibit at the RHS Botanical Art Show have already met a high bar in being "approved to exhibit". So this post, to the extent that it considers weaknesses and aspects capable of improvement is very much focused on the tweaking and refining which is always a focus for those seeking to exhibit at the top level of this international exhibition. The only artists I name are those who won Gold Medals and the only images I show are those by Gold Medal winners. It's another of my VERY LONG posts and it's intended for all those artists who:
I'm bound to have forgotten something I meant to say, so this may well be revised and updated over the next couple of days. It will be added to my archive of posts about RHS Exhibits for the benefit of those who I'll be reviewing in future years. Why write this post?One of the HUGE benefits of the RHS Botanical Art Show is that each Judge provides detailed feedback to artists individually. So each artist has already had the "official view" on why they got the colour of medal that they did. So why write this post? After all I'm not a Judge - but
As a result I've learned, over time, how to recognise a Gold Medal winner. Indeed I'm proud to say I used to be able to identify most of them before the medal certificates went up. I also like to work out
When we had the RHS Botanical Art Show for just two days in the Lindley Horticultural Hall in Victoria, lots of artists from all over the world were able to attend for the entire 2.5 days involved with the hang, private view, open to the public and take down. As a result I always made a point of interviewing all the Gold Medallists who were there and able to converse in English. In doing so, I identified what were their top tips for the benefit of future exhibitors. (See various posts in my Archive of my posts about the RHS Show) However I cannot do that any more given the very limited time to access those artists who do attend the opening of the exhibition. So, I decided to find another way of passing on what I think may well be useful tips for others who want to exhibit - or exhibit again. Hence this post! I'm happy for others to comment (below) on their views or what they've learned - but please be respectful of artists. I'd prefer you to highlight what you liked most! Judging CriteriaIt's very useful to review the Judging Criteria against which every exhibit - and every painting in every exhibit - is assessed. That's because if you don't keep these in mind as you prepare and plan your exhibit you are not going to score well across all criteria. Below, I've highlighted each set of criteria and commented on one or two gold-medal winning exhibits which I thought provided good examples of how to fulfil that particular criterion. Back in 2018, I asked questions about how a Judge might be able to assess the appropriate colour of a medal. The quotation below follows comes from RHS Botanical Art Show #3: Medals Awards and Feedback (June 2018). When judging, the Panel will look at each exhibit at least twice, sometimes three times, to ensure there is parity between the medals being awarded. There is a lot of discussion and each member votes on the medal to be awarded. The Strengths of RHS Gold Medal Winners in meeting the Judging CriteriaI'm now going to highlight examples, by named Gold Medal Winners, of ways they met the criteria. I am focusing on the main themes I found when walking round analysing the exhibits. I actually noted everything I thought was relevant to each exhibitor. However, below, I'm going to reconfigure my notes and relate them to the Judging Criteria For some points you'll see macros of paintings which I will have referenced in my last post RHS Botanical Art Show 2024: Awards and Medals. You can also see images of all the Gold Medal winning exhibits in this post too. Can I just emphasise that I wanted at least one Gold Medallist for every criteria but several excelled across a number of criteria - but I could not include them all. (Well I could, but that would have involved spending a few more days writing an even longer post!) The first set of criteria relate to technical skill. This is about the ability to observe and render accurately. TECHNICAL SKILL Drawing Skills
The feature of botanical art which differentiates it from flower painting is it provides accurate and factual information about a plant. (See What is Botanical Art on this website) I was extremely impressed by the clarity of structure and growth habit demonstrated by Yuko Saito in her exhibit of Three distinct groups of Celosia based on their structure. She met her brief perfectly. Aspects of drawing I particularly liked included:
Scope for improvement I'd highly recommend that artists pay attention to how their drawing of various components of their artwork compete for the attention of the eye of the viewer. This is where the composition and design element of the criteria becomes important. You can sketch in any number of ways when making studies of your specimen. However when it comes to creating an exhibit artwork, you need to think very, very carefully about how your draughtsmanship can excel and help explain the plant. Dissections, in particular, should never ever confuse as to what should be the focus of the artwork i.e. the plant. They should always be included in a support role - and their drawing (in weight, tone, colouration), placement and prominence should reflect that. TECHNICAL SKILL Monochrome (eg pen and ink)
One of the interesting aspects of this show is how many exhibits were totally or largely monochrome. I don't think I've ever seen so many pen and ink exhibits in one RHS show. Future exhibitors may wish to know that expert pen and ink illustrator Lucy T Smith who is an award winning scientific botanical illustrator (she's won the Margaret Flockton Award twice!) working with the botanists at Kew Gardens, will be joining the Panel of Judges in 2025. As part of her induction, she participated in the review of exhibits this year although unable to vote. Two pen and ink exhibits won Gold Medal Winners for Hyunjin Cho (USA) and Sandunmali Kulasekara (Sri Lanka).
Sandunmali Kulasekara adopted the style of the scientific botanical illustrator and used an excellent combination of both line and stipple. Her illustrations were very clear and well organised and will reproduce well. (see an image by her below under Botanical details) Hyunjin Cho explored the structure and form of succulents using a less technical and much more aesthetic approach and focused on the use of stippling to render her drawings. That's not to say her exhibit was in any way less accurate. She demonstrates an excellent range of tonal values in relation to very intricate structures. There is absolutely nothing heavy handed about her drawings in pen and ink. She also used proper scale marks. You can see her stippled drawing of this Madagascan Palm on her Instagram account. It has previously been exhibited at the ASBA 26th International Exhibition. Scope to improve The trick with pen and ink is to do enough, but not too much. If the nib/point used is not fine enough or the style is too heavy handed, then lines and/or stipple have a tendency to run into one another and clarity is compromised. Whereas in a Gold Medal work every important aspect remains crystal clear. The botanical drawing needs to read VERY clearly. If when you stand back from it, lines without adequate variation begin to merge into a lot of black, then there is definitely scope to improve. Similarly lack of clarity when an image is reduced for publication is also cause for concern. One easy way to check whether you pass the clarity test is to try varying the magnification of a digital image of your monochrome drawing to see how well it reads when this is varied. The other key question is to ask if it looks three dimensional - or flat. TECHNICAL SKILL Paint and Colour Handling
It's a big mistake to think that excellent skills in paint handling will see you through to a decent medal colour. There's a lot more to how an RHS Exhibit is assessed - as indicated elsewhere in this post. I saw examples of excellent paint and colour handling - using watercolour or coloured pencil - in exhibits by both gold and silver-gilt medallists. That's not to say that those being awarded lesser medals are bad so much as they've not yet achieved the excellence that is so clearly demonstrated in some exhibits in this show. This is one of the main reasons why I recommend people visit the show if they can before they submit to be approved to exhibit and/or start their exhibit. You really need to see the exhibits up close to see what level you need to compete at. One such artist was Maria Lombardi and I'm including a macro of the centre of one of her Tillandsia below. This is because it wasn't until I got up close that I realised how expert her skills were in dry brushwork, painting colour and handling tones. As a result, the highly complex forms of Tillandsia read extremely well on the wall and astound when inspected close up! That's a feature of Gold Medal winning artwork which I always look for. It impresses from a distance and amazes you when you get close up. Note how her very pale colours are revealed and highlighted by the darker tones behind. This is very reminiscent of the renowned Pandora Sellars 'trick' of bringing light out of dark. See About Pandora Sellars. Note also the variation in actual colour of the different individual shades - as you get in real life plants. Another artist I'd highlight in terms of the attention paid to detail is Toni Dade - and I'm talking the texture of the stem of the seedpod, amongst other aspects of her exhibit which caught my attention A very clear indicator for me of a Gold Medal Winner is the attention paid to leaves. I always look very closely at how leaves are painted to check how many different greens have been used. For me, it's an absolute giveaway. Gold Medal winners always display a very wide range of colour mixes in their greens which provide clear evidence of observing a plant closely in real life. I was also very impressed with how two artists handled the reds associated with their plants. Red is a very challenging colour because it always grabs the eye and hence the painting needs to be excellent when this hue is used.
Scope to Improve Those getting lesser medals often need to review how they handle colour and tone. For me, this is one of the aspects where I typically see the greatest range in skill and expertise demonstrated in the exhibition. Yet, this is an absolute basic - and in principle should be good given the artists have persuaded the Picture Panel that they can achieve at least silver medal standard. Exhibits I saw included everything from:
There is a happy medium. It's imperative that colour represents the plant well - in terms of structure, perspective and actual colour - and can be seen easily, without either assaulting or straining the eyes. If your subject has very pale colours, I'd recommend consideration needs to be given at an early stage as to how to ensure a very pale colour can actually be seen. A pencil line around a shape really does not do the job. Finally, if you're using the same few colour mixes all over your painting, this suggests that you need to improve your observation and do much more research and practice in using different colour mixes. SCIENCE & HORTICULTURE Botanical Details
The next set of criteria relate to the serious scientific and horticultural aspects of plants. All botanical art is about rendering a plant in a way which is informative. The Medicinal Plants Native to the Desert illustrations of Sandunmali Kulasekara were very clear and well organised and will reproduce well. They included:
SCIENCE & HORTICULTURE Horticultural / ecological / local environment context
Betsy Rogers-Knox's "Looking over the Overlooked - The Forest Floor" is a prime example of an exhibit about wild plants of the forest floor - with a strong habitat emphasis and the ecological story of how the plants of the forest floor are crucial to recycling and the whole biomass ecosystem of the forest. It includes mushrooms and lichens as well as more conventional wild plants. They are grouped according to how they grow and when they grow. You can really tell that Betsy's paintings come from her very many visits to her local forest floor. This series of six watercolor illustrations are based on my observations while hiking during all seasons in the Litchfield Hills of Northwest, Connecticut, USA. The term forest floor can refer to the moss and root layers, but often is defined more broadly including also herbaceous plants, mushrooms and other fungi, tree seedlings, dead trees and other decaying plant debris, such as dead leaves, all of which are included in this body of work The six paintings - which each include four or five different plants and lichens - portray the changes in the forest floor over the course of a year and the four seasons. Essentially it's repetition of place without repetition of plants. Daleen Roodt (South Africa) opted to portray her South African Orchids in the context of their natural habitat - including:
I'm also sure this exhibit also scored well in the scale of endeavour criteria. Scope for improvement Doing field trips - especially ones where you live - and seeing your plants growing where they naturally grow is the very best aid to representing them in a lifelike way on your support. Gold Medal winners who focus on habitat and ecology also tend to focus on field trips and studying their specimens in the wild, where obviously they need to be left well alone to continue to grow. I'd advocate for artists to paint leaves exactly as you find them. Leaves which are too perfect are less believable than those which demonstrate how leaves change over time. On the whole, it's best to avoid including natural history companions unless of particular relevance to the pollination and survival of the plant. OVERALL IMPRESSION Composition and arrangement on the page
This is the "Does it read well?" criteria. Can you see the story of the plant (eg life cycle) very clearly? Do your eyes move across the artwork with ease? Gold Medal winner Amelia Grass's "Overlooked" exhibit of Wildflowers in the Restored Meadows of Glyntaff, South Wales was, in my opinion, one of the best designed and composed exhibits in the 2024 Exhibition. Her plants were not part of the same family and each are dissimilar. Yet this is an extremely coherent exhibit due to the consistency maintained in the design of each individual artwork and how it has been designed overall.
If she continues with this stylistic compositional device, I predict she will do extremely well in future RHS Exhibitions. Students would do well to study her work. By way of contrast, another exhibit which read very well from a distance was Ann Hayes's exhibit of Banksia serrata. The whole point of the exhibit was to demonstrate that climate and elevation affects both the morphology of the seedpods and cones of the Banksia serrata found in four botanic gardens in New South Wales and Canberra. So all the objects portrayed were the same - but different - for a reason. Scope to Improve It was difficult to detect much thought given to composition and design in some exhibits. Weaknesses included:
I saw more than one exhibit which was far too crowded. Much too much information and very, very little white 'negative' space - which is essential for artwork to work well. The images were very difficult to 'read' and when hung together the result was visual overload/ indigestion. In one instance it was very clear to me that it was this aspect which meant the artist did not get a Gold - because each painting was beautifully coloured. "Less is more" is a design principle for a reason. I'd advocate for avoiding any contrived features in an exhibit painting. Stick to the "tried and true" practice of lines of dissections - whether vertical or horizontal and reflect on size and content and tone BEFORE you start. Bottom line - you don't have to paint it simply because you can! OVERALL IMPRESSION Balance of Exhibit
Balance of Exhibit Artworks need to look as if they belong together.
One such was the exhibit by Toni Dade (Portugal) which included hugely magnified seed pods of Magnolia grandiflora at various stages of life. Her painting top left is a conventional portrayal of the plant - but the other five paintings expand and explode the seedpod in all its colour and textual changes as it becomes mature and then dessicated. I was walking straight towards it as soon as I saw it as I knew exactly what I was looking at and wanted to see more. Key features of Toni Dade's exhibit are:
Scope for Improvement I saw exhibits which were unbalanced. As a result, the artwork did not work well as a group. I'm sure the likely explanation is because the question of how they should hang together was probably not considered until most artwork was completed.
Artists do themselves no favours when they
One of the best tips I ever got from past Gold Medal Winners is to think long and hard BEFORE you start your RHS artwork about how to design your overall exhibit. NOTE: You can see more tips from past Gold Medal Winners in Tips from RHS Gold Medal Winners OVERALL IMPRESSION New Ideas / Scale of Endeavour
This last criteria is, I believe, a relatively late addition to the criteria for judging RHS Botanical Art Exhibits. In part, because international artists kept turning up with completely novel exhibits which demonstrated a scale of endeavour which went way, way beyond the nice painting of a number of species or cultivars. There are a number of exhibits in this exhibition which demonstrate a significant scale of endeavour. Two examples are
Scope for improvement The antithesis of an ambitious project is one which is just too simple. The scale and scope of the project - and each individual artwork - is important if you want to maximise marks for your overall score and the colour of your medal. Exhibitors need to be very aware that the scale, ambition and standard of exhibits is increasing over time - and one of the ways they are improving often relates to scale and scope - and subject matter which has simply never been done before. Indeed the ways in which artwork keeps changing and improving are amply demonstrated by some of the exhibits in viewing cabinets in the middle of the exhibition which highlight artwork by artists who contributed artwork to the RHS Collection in the past. I've known past GM winners from previous decades profess to being very wary of submitting another exhibit in case it didn't get another GM. I'd suggest they have a chat with Kathy Pickles and/or Christina Hart-Davies who won their first GMs in the early 90s but who also came back more than 20 years later and won GMs again - because they do classic work on classic subject matter which always merits that level of recognition. (I'm the proud owner of one of Christina's GM winning lichens!) (NOTE: You can check out the titles of Gold Medal winning exhibits from the last few years in my Gold Medal winning Exhibit Titles at RHS Botanical Art Shows. You can see from these which themes are most popular and where there is the least competition! This will be updated very soon) How to avoid a bronzeI was amazed to find three exhibits awarded a bronze medal. So if you want to avoid getting a bronze medal, I'd like to make one very simply suggestion. The Picture Panel Judges are expecting those approved to exhibit to be capable of achieving a Silver Medal. If you don't achieve that standard, you'll be awarded a Bronze or no medal at all. I've certainly seen exhibits which failed to achieve even a bronze medal before now. (My jaw dropped!) Put simply, an artist achieving a Bronze Medal has
My very simple message to all those who want to make sure they avoid getting a Bronze is this... If your artwork submitted for your application to be able to be approved to exhibit in future is of a silver medal standard, you are clearly capable of achieving that level - in that media. The key difference between the RHS and every other juried botanical art exhibition, is that for this show
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1 Comment
8/7/2024 12:32:51 pm
An incredibly detailed and clear summary of the exhibition that should be read and re-read by prospective exhibitors to get the most out of all the advice and observations you have made. I for one am keeping it close! Thank you so much Katherine.
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AuthorKatherine Tyrrell writes about botanical art and artists and has followers all over the world. You can also find her at linktr.ee BAA Visitors so far....
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