Text and Images © Christine Battle 2018

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My interest in botanical art began a long time ago in my teens when I first discovered Albrecht Dürer’s amazing painting ‘Tall Grass’.

However it wasn’t till 2006, after a career in journalism and copywriting, that I came to botanical art through a birthday present of a two-day course to study illustraton. I realised then how much I enjoyed painting plants and that this is what I wanted to pursue as a career. Two years later I graduated from the English Gardening School at Chelsea Physic Garden with a diploma in botanical illustration.

Since then I have exhibited with the RHS, gaining a Gold medal in 2010 for my series of paintings “New Trees”; in New York in 2011 with the American Society of Botanical Artists, where my painting of a Eucalyptus received an Honourable Mention; and in 2013 at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation in Pittsburgh.

In 2009 I was invited to become a member of Chelsea Physic Garden Florilegium Society and have so far contributed four paintings to the collection. Started in the 1980’s, this group of internationally renowned artists is engaged in illustrating all the plants in the Gardens, to create a permanent record of botanical accuracy and artistic merit.

I have also contributed three paintings to the Transylvania Florilegium presently being created under the aegis of HRH the Prince of Wales’ School of Traditional Arts.

On a more regular basis I paint coloured Plates for Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, a quarterly publication first printed in 1788 by Kew.

My studio is a converted shepherd’s hut in the garden of my home in Wiltshire, where I work in the traditional manner using watercolour on handmade paper – and occasionally vellum.

EXHIBITIONS

One-Person Exhibition/s: Botanical Watercolours, Backyard Gallery, Tetbury, Gloucestershire 2011

Group Exhibition/s: Summer Exhibition, Bath Society of Botanical Artists, Bath 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011

14th and 15th Annual International Juried Botanical Art Exhibition, American Society of Botanical Artists and Horticultural Society of New York, NY

  2011, 2012

A New Leaf, Amicus Botanicus Group, 54 The Gallery, Mayfair, London 2012

Plants In The Park, Bath Society of Botanical Artists, Bath Royal Library and Scientific Institute, Bath 2012

The Art of Trees, Westonbirt National Arboretum, Tetbury, Gloucestershire 2013

14th International Exhibition of Botanical Art & Illustration, Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Pittsburgh, USA 2013

Plant Portraits by Chelsea Physic Garden Florilegium Society, Chelsea Physic Garden, London 2013, 2015

The Art of Inspiring Hope, Amicus Botanicus Group, 54 The Gallery, Mayfair, London 2014

Inspiring Kew, Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2014

Florilegium: Sydney’s Painted Garden, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney 2016/7

WORK HELD

Sydney Florilegium Society

Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation

Chelsea Physic Garden Florilegium Society

Collection of Mrs Ian Bond

Collection of Mrs Simon Gudgeon

Collection of Nigel Hugh-Smith Esq

PUBLICATIONS

Coombes, A. and Rix, M. 2012. Quercus guyavifolia. Curtis’s Botanical Magazine 29(2) (Wiley Blackwell): 152-161.

 Farjon, A. 2013. Cupressus torulosa. Curtis’s Botanical Magazine 30(3) (Wiley Blackwell): 166-176.

Brown, A. 2015. Papaver somniferum. Botanical Illustration from Chelsea Physic Garden (Antique Collectors Club): 132-133.

Morris, C. and Murray, L. 2016. Rhododendron dalhousiae. The Florilegium: Celebrating 200 Years (The Florilegium Society at the RBG Sydney

  Inc.): 186-187.

Rushforth, K. 2016. Sorbus henryi. Curtis’s Botanical Magazine 33 (1) (Wiley Blackwell): 67-73.

Baldwin, H. 2016. Neoshirakia japonica. Curtis’s Botanical Magazine 33 (1) (Wiley Blackwell): 74-81.