RHS Botanical Art Show 2026: Silver Medals

This is my post in which I highlight who won the three RHS Silver medals at the RHS Botanical Art Show 2026. As I've mentioned previously, the standard to be accepted to exhibit at the RHS Botanical Art Show is "Silver Medal Standard". 

This is the third of my posts about who won which medals. The two before this were

• RHS Botanical Art Show 2026: Awards and Gold Medals 
• RHS Botanical Art Show 2026: Silver Gilt Medals​

RHS Botanical Art Show 2026: View of part of Gallery 2.

Those winning a Silver medal will usually have numerous areas for improvement to reach a Gold Medal Standard. (EXTRACTED FROM: RHS Botanical Art Show #3: Medals Awards and Feedback (2018)

​Artists are listed below in alphabetical order by surname. Links to websites or social media are embedded in the name

Kati Haajanen Rosacea - RHS Silver 2026

Kati Haajanen (UK) RHS Medal History: First Time Exhibitor
Rosacea

Kati lives in Cupar in Scotland and is a first time exhibitor and  likes painting nature, plants and animals. She did a 2 year Diploma in Painting and Printmaking from Heatherley School of Fine Art, London and graduated in July 2012. She also took watercolour classes with Claire Dalby RWS RE (lucky girl!).  Kati is also a children's illustrator. 

These paintings are small acts of devotion - to the seasons, to the brief beauty of flowers and berries, and to the way colour carries memory. A reminder that nothing lasts forever, and perhaps that is why it feels so precious,

​My reading of her rather "romantic" statement about her exhibit and what her paintings mean to her ​indicated to me that this was an artist who was maybe approaching these paintings from a rather more floral perspective. She calls it "arty". I am left wondering whether the Judges felt that some aspects lacked the botanical rigour expected of exhibits in this show - and whether that might be the reason for the Silver Medal. For example, I could see no scale bars.

There is also an inconsistency in size and format within her six exhibits. This is something that can be eliminated at the outset if the exhibit is designed from the outset as a set. For me it indicates an artist who has tackled her paintings one at a time - which is not untypical - but has maybe not settled on a pictorial format before she started. I personally found the mats cut in rather too much to the painting leaving less space than I would like to see for the plants to "breathe".

Very grateful for my silver medal, and that they allowed me to use my slightly more arty, less scientific approach in my exhibit

​Irina Neacsu (Romania) 
RHS Medal History: Silver-Gilt 2022
Iris Pseuadacorus: Beauty and Resilience in Connecticut Wetlands

Irina lives and works in Romania. She originally trained as an architect and is currently pursuing a PhD at the Art University in Bucharest and is a researcher at the National Museum of Art in Bucharest. Her more recent studies have been about the landscape and she uses plants to explore the connections between culture and landscape. It's a very different sort of perspective for an RHS Botanical Art exhibit. I kept thinking of it as "dancing at the margins". Read on to find out why.

Irina Neacsu - Iris Pseuadacorus: Beauty and Resilience in Connecticut Wetlands

Irina provides yet another profile for America in this exhibition.  Her fieldwork for her exhibit took place in New Haven (USA) while she studied as a Fulbright Scholar at Yale University,  supported by herbarium research in both New Haven, US and Brasov, Romania.

Beyond the joy of the medal, I’m extremely delighted to have painted this set, as the irises from East Rock, New Haven remain a very special memory from my Fulbright year at Yale.

Her exhibit explores the relationships between human intervention, variation and plant
resilience. 

Her Iris pseudacorus were documented at East Rock, Connecticut, USA in 2025. Discovering that this species is both invasive and a non-native contrasted sharply with the appreciation it receives in the region. Her research explored the the cultural significance of invasive plants and contemporary ecological aesthetics in landscapes.

I very much liked the size of her artwork and her consistency in making five of the six the exact same size. I also had no problem with her using a map as part of the background on one painting given her research interests. 

However, this exhibit for me was a classic example of squeezing in too much work to too short a timescale. There is a reason would-be exhibitors have five years to research and develop their exhibits. Partly it's to do with the botany, partly to do with seasonality issues - but it's also to do with the time required to develop top notch artwork. For me these paintings felt a tad rushed and lacked "finish" and theyapparently did not quite meet the level as an overall exhibit that she achieved for her Silver Gilt Medal in 2022 (see RHS Silver Gilt Medals - Botanical Art Show 2022) - which I missed as I was still mobilising on one leg at the time after ankle fusion surgery!

They are however, in my opinion, a solid exhibit of her main interest.

I recommend her Instagram which covers her range of interests and also shows you more of her artwork up close.

Fran Thomas  (UK/Scotland) 
RHS Medal History: Silver-Gilt 2021, 2015 & 2014 (She has also previously won a Gold Medal at BISCOT)
Waxcap Fungi of the Lawns of Hopetoun House, Edinburgh

Fran lives and works in Edinburgh, Scotland and her practice focuses on painting native Scottish plants. She has a background in Ecology and am MSc in Forest Science. She garduated with Distinction in her Diploma in Botanical Illustration from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh course. I first came across her work in 2014 when she had painted Native Scottish marginal pond plants and won a Silver Gilt. She has also won a Gold Medal at BISCOT and the Mary Mendum Medal for an outstanding exhibit. Fran is resolutely without website or social media.

Fran Thomas with her Silver Medal exhibit "Waxcap Fungi of the Lawns of Hopetoun House, Edinburgh"

Mv fieldwork took place in autumn at Hopetoun House, where the lawns have existed for centuries and more than twenty species (of waxcaps) have been recorded. The identification features I have tried to display include
* texture of cap and stipe (slimy, sticky, dry, smooth, fibrillose);
* gill attachment (broad or narrow, or running down the stipe); and, of course,
* the astonishing colours!

Given her track record to date and my chat with her, I think Fran was disappointed in her medal colour. However, at the same time she knew full well what had contributed to it. Insofar as she rushed to finish some of the paintings for the deadline. I certainly felt there was an discernible inconsistency in the design and level of finish of the different paintings.

The paintings were also rather smaller than those we are now used to in this exhibition. It was also not helped by the fact there were three other exhibits also dealing with fungi in the same show! There was another very colourful exhibit about colourful fungi at the other end of the wall Fran's exhibit is one which won a Silver Gilt. For those visiting the exhibition, it's worth making a study of the four different exhibits and study how they tackled their subjects differently and how that is reflected in the medial they were each awarded.

One of the aspects which is complete pot luck for any artist aspiring to exhibit at RHS is whether your exhibit is going to be one on its own - or whether there are going to be others to compare it with.

In my experience, those who win the top awards and the Gold Medals are typically people who have tackled something unique which has never been done before.

The RHS Botanical Art and Photography Show can currently be seen at the Saatchi Gallery until 2nd August.

• Open Monday – Sunday
• Hours: 10AM – 6PM with last entry at 5.20pm.

You can see one image from every exhibitor online on this page

I'm going back to see it again on Saturday with a multiple Gold Medal winner!
It'll be interesting to see if we have the same perspective on it!