Society of Botanical Art 2016 - Certificates of Botanical Merit

The announcement about which artists have won Certificates of Botanical Merit (CBM) comes after the prizes at the Annual Exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists each year.

I've known more than a few artists who have been more pleased about their CBM than their prize!

Heidi Venamore was awarded a Certificate of Botanical Merit for her Acanthus mollis
and then graduated the following day from the SBA Distance Learning Diploma - with Distinction

The expert judge for 2016 was Lucy T. Smith, botanical illustrator employed by the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew. She won the Margaret Flockton Award in 2014 and the Jill Smythies Award for Botanical Illustration, awarded by the Linnean Society of London in 2004 .

Lucy awarded the CBMs for images which fulfilled the brief of describing the plant accurately and well rather than according to a strict botanical illustration brief.

Here's some pics of people with their work and/or getting their much prized CBM Certificates.

Polly O'Leary with her work and her Certificate

This is Polly's first Certificate of Botanical Merit and it's unlikely to be her last!

Billy Showell receiving her SIXTH CBM from Dr Stephen Dowbiggin OBE

Billy Showell has won five CBMs prior to 2016 and this is her sixth!  It's also an extremely unusual and very striking painting - which you can see below.

Christiana Webb receiving her CBM from Dr Stephen Dowbiggin

Christiana was also Highly Commended for the Joyce Cuming Award - and an image of this has now been added into yesterday's post - Prizewinners - Society of Botanical Artists' Annual Exhibition 2016

As was Margaret Fitzpatrick - seen here turning away after collecting her second award.

Another smiling artist - Margaret Fitzpatrick picks up her CBM.

Certificates of Botanical Merit

The artists who have been awarded a Certificate of Botanical Merit in 2016 are below followed by images of their work and/or being presented with their Certificate.

Name	Title	Number
Margaret J. Fitzpatrick DipAD SBA FCPGFS	Primula vulgaris	163
Elizabeth Hellman Assoc SBA	Spider Chrysanthemum “Lola”	246
Polly O’Leary SBA SFP	Echeveria cante Inflorescence	359
Sally Jane Perrin SBA, CBM 1997	A Ray of Autumn Sunshine	376
Beth Phillip GM SBA CBM  2008,2010, 2015	Sarracenia psittacina	384
Billy Showell SBA SFP SGM CBM 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007	Seaweed design: pieces of dry ascophyllum	449
Eun Young Song	Helianthocereus macrogonus cv. crista	462
Richard Tratt	The Long Wait: Trichocerus in flower	510
Heidi Venamore	Acanthus mollis	525
Christiana Webb	Bhutan Pine Cones	532

You can find the links to the blog posts of artists winning CBMs in previous years at the end of this post.

What follows now are the images of the works which won CBMs. I don't have them all included but hope to remedy this.

Spider Chrysanthemum “Lola” by Elizabeth Hellman SBA

This is a lovely and very "look at me" painting. It's also an excellent choice of variety given this year's theme of 'Shape, Pattern, Structure'.

Echeveria cante Inflorescence by Polly O'Leary

Polly painted the inflorescence at 2.5 times normal size to capture and highlight the structure and intricacies and colour variations of the flower spike of this succulent

Sarracenia psittacina by Beth Phillip SBA

Another CBM for Beth - to add to those collected in 2008, 2010 and 2015. She is becoming well known for her paintings of Sarracenias. It's never a bad thing for a botanical artist to be known for painting a species.

Seaweed Design: Pieces of Dry Ascophyllum by Billy Showell
(watercolour and graphite)

This is an accurate but very unusual and contemporary treatment of seaweed. I liked looking at this a lot. I do like it when artists think about how their plants can be portrayed so they are correctly portrayed but contemporary rather than conventional in appearance.

Acanthus mollis by Heidi Venamore DipSBA (Distinction)
Watercolour on Fabriano Artistico extra white cotton rag 300 gsm
42 c 29.7cm

This is a very classical treatment of the Acanthus but Heidi really uses the habit and characteristics of the plant to create the structure and design of the composition - and I suspect this is what appealed to Lucy!

This is the first and only painting Heidi has entered in the SBA Exhibition. She topped off a good week by graduating with a Distinction in the SBA's Diploma the next day.

Bhutan Pine Cones by Christiana Webb GM SBA

Christiana echoes the design characteristics of her cones in the overall design of her painting while creating a sense of movement associated with the natural falling habit of the cones.

Primula vulgaris by Margaret Fitzpatrick SBA FCPGFS

This is a really lovely painting on natural vellum which collected two awards and sold as well!

More about Certificates of Botanical Merit

If you've enjoyed this post you might like to look back at similar posts I've written in the last five years.

• Society of Botanical Art: Certificates of Botanical Merit 2015
• Certificates of Botanical Merit at SBA Annual Exhibition 2014
• Other prizewinners at the SBA Annual Exhibition 2013
• Certificates of Botanical Merit at SBA 2012
• Certificates of Botanical Merit at SBA Exhibition 2011

More about the SBA Annual Exhibition

My next post about the exhibition will review it as a whole.

For those following the knee saga - the good news is my GP has now ordered an MRI and my new 'Gladiator' knee brace should turn up tomorrow. So, fingers crossed, I may be paying a return visit to the exhibition on Wednesday - in which case the review will come after that.

In the meantime if you want to see who is doing which demonstrations for the rest of the week you need to consult yesterday's post.

Society of Botanical Art: Exhibitions 2016

• Private View - Annual Exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists
• Call for Entries: Society of Botanical Artists' Annual Exhibition 2016
• Prizewinners - Society of Botanical Artists' Annual Exhibition 2016

Society of Botanical Art: Exhibitions 2006-2015

• Previous years: Society of Botanical Art Exhibitions

More information about Botanical Art

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