Expressions in Blue: Monumental Porcelain by Felicity Aylieff

Last night I was at the PV for two NEW exhibitions at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens:

• Expressions in Blue: Monumental Porcelain by Felicity Aylieff - reviewed below;
• Botanical Blues - a selection of botanical paintings from The Shirley Sherwood Collection in Gallery 6 - which will be reviewed shortly on my Botanical Art and Artist News Blog. This showcases works from botanical artists including Susannah Blaxhill, Jinyong Feng and Ursula Romero, depicting many remarkable plant species which can be found in Kew’s Living Collections.

About the Exhibition

This is the largest solo exhibition to date of monumental ceramics in made by Felicity Aylieff. 

It's certainly a "must see" for anybody interested un unusual approaches to creating porcelain, enamelled posts and BIG pots.

 

I gather the exhibition - which opened at the weekend has attracted large numbers very keen to see the monumental porcelain. 

It's certainly an exhibition quite unlike any other exhibition I've ever seen of ceramics.

Felicity Aylieff with her monumental Qing Hua porcelain pots

I'm somewhat surprised to see it at Kew Gardens - as opposed to the shrine of ceramic treasures which can be found in the Ceramics Collection on the sixth floor and other main galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

I gather the reason it's at Kew is because 

• the gardens allow some of the monumental pots to be located outside - and there are two huge ones right outside the museum (which I couldn't see last night in the dark) but you can see in my friend Laurence Hill's photosgraphs of the exhibits
• some of the pots have been decorated with patterns derived from plants and specifically paintings included in the Shirley Sherwood Collection of Botanical Art

I think overall I'd have preferred to see an emphasis by Kew in its marketing on the particular aspects of the exhibition which relate to plants - given that this is a Gallery of BOTANICAL Art - rather than being enticed by the huge monumental blue and white pots (see publicity image above) - nice as they are.

In other words, given the exhibition is at Kew and not the V&A, what's special about the ceramics in relation to plants?

Monumental 'Qing Hua' pots decorated with cobalt blue chloride
The people at the Private View give an indication of the size of the pots

It includes:

Surgery postponed - my list of exhibitions in London to visit

I made it all the way to the ward, unpacked and knew when the operation was likely to take place when it was CANCELLED (long story not for this blog!). It's hopefully in the process of being rescheduled for mid January.

So coming home again I started making a mental list of exhibitions to try and go and see.... 

and these are they....

ART EXHIBITIONS to see in London

Courtauld Museum

https://courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/

....has reopened after its major transformation project and I'd like to try and get to see old favourites again.

 

Hokusai: The Great Picture Book of Everything

https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/hokusai-great-picture-book-everything

Venue: Room 90, British Museum

Dates: until 30th January 2022

Ticket prices - cheaper to go in the week rather than the weekend

In a global first, this exhibition will display 103 recently acquired drawings by Hokusai, produced in the 1820s–1840s for an illustrated encyclopedia called The Great Picture Book of Everything. For reasons unknown, the book was never published, presenting the opportunity to see these exceptional works which would otherwise have been destroyed as part of the woodblock printing process.

Depicting scenes from Buddhist India, ancient China and the natural world, the brush drawings not only showcase Hokusai's inimitable style and skill, but also reveal a version of 19th-century Japan much more intrigued by the wider world than previously thought.

Dürer's Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/durers-journeys-travels-of-a-renaissance-artist

Venue: Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery

Dates: Until 27 February 2022

Ticket prices: Standard admission £20 Monday – Sunday plus concessions

This is the exhibition which should have been held in 6 March 2021 – 13 June 2021 - but got caught by the lockdown.

I was really miffed I was going to miss this one so pleased I can now get to see it as I'[m a big admirer of Durer.

The first major UK exhibition of German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer in nearly 20 years.

Through paintings, drawings, prints, and letters, this exhibition follows Dürer’s travels across Europe, bringing to life the artist himself, and the people and places he visited.

Charting his journeys to the Alps, Italy, Venice and the Netherlands, the exhibition will explore how Dürer’s travels sparked an exchange of ideas with Netherlandish and Italian Renaissance artists, fuelled his curiosity and creativity, and increased his fame and influence across Europe.

Hogarth and Europe

Venue: Tate Britain
Dates: Until 20th March 2022

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/hogarth-and-europe

One that had completely passed me by - but I am partial to Hogarth. I often wonder why more artists today - with the exception of Grayson Perry - don't follow in his footsteps in terms of recording daily life.

Funny video provides a new take on the story!

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2021

Gainsborough, Zoffany and Kew

This week I went to Kew twice - and did something I've been meaning to do for absolutely ages - tried to locate the plaque relating to a Botanick Painter to his Majesty" in the church near the entrance to Kew Gardens.

I am a perennial tracker down of places where artists have lived, painted and been buried. In this instance I visited St Anne's Church on Kew Green (latter links is the location on Google Maps)

St Anne's Church Kew Green 
- the path in the foreground leads down to the Herbarium in Kew Gardens where Bauer would have worked

My reason for visiting was that Francis (Franz) Bauer (1758 - 1840), who was the ''Botanick Painter to His Majesty' has a plaque inside the church.

What I didn't realise is that the church is also where two other important artists are buried - namely

• Thomas Gainsborough (1727 - 1788), English portrait and landscape painter and 
• Johan Zoffany (d. 1810), German neoclassical painter active in England

A Botanical Art Bonanza!

Botanical art fans are converging on London this week for the RHS Botanical Art Show. 

In terms of handing out Gold Medals for Botanical Art this is the most prestigious botanical art show in the world.  It effect it's the visual equivalent for botanical artists of the Olympics or the World Cup! Absolutely nothing else presents the same sort of challenge!

That's why in recent days botanical artists have jetted into London from all around the globe - to try and capture that elusive RHS Gold Medal. That said, we've got quite a few Gold Medallists who are returning to see if they can enhance their credibility by winning another one!.

Medals are being awarded as I write - and I'll be there at this evening's reception.

View of part of last year's exhibition in the RHS Lindley Hall
Each of the run of panels is an exhibit of a minimum of six works by one artist
Work is graded against various criteria
- but medal colour is often determined by the weakest not the best - so everything has to be excellent!

However, while in London to see this show there is also the most fantastic opportunity to see other top class botanical art exhibitions - and this is a list of the details of everything on offer in London - in terms of botanical art!

Those pursuing other genres might pause for a moment and reflect when there were this many top class of exhibitions in prestigious venues for other subject matter!

Royal Horticultural Society

The RHS Plant and Art Fair (10-12 July 2018) includes three international exhibitions of botanical art and photography. These are:

• The RHS Botanical Art Show
• The RHS Botanical Photography Show 
• The RHS Photographer of the Year 2018

The RHS Botanical Art Show

Venue: RHS Lindley Hall, Elverton Street,
Dates: 10-12 July 2018

For more information:

• official website - and vis news posts on Botanical Art and Artists (below)
• Exhibiting artists at RHS Botanical Art Show 2018 - and this list includes a significant number of former Gold Medal winners back for another try!
• Exhibits at the RHS Botanical Art Show 2018 - the themes for the portfolio of a minimum of six paintings to be shown by each exhibitor
• Trade Stand Exhibitors at the RHS Plant and Art Fair (July 2018)

Plus this is information about how the RHS Botanical Art Show works for those aspiring to show in 2020 (you're already too late for 2019!). It's the only show I know where you have to be approved BEFORE you can submit your artwork

• RHS Botanical Art Show #1 Approval to Submit
• RHS Botanical Art Show #2: The Judges and Judging Process
• RHS Botanical Art Show #3: Medals Awards and Feedback

This is also a show where it pays to sort your visa out in good time..... It loosk like we might have lost one exhibitor to visa problems at the UK end.... - which will be very disappointing

This is a video I made of last year's Botanical Art Show



The number of botanical artists this year - per country is as follows:

• 19 x UK + 1 group
• 7 x Japan
• 4 x Korea
• 2 x Italy
• 2 x New Zealand
• 2 x Turkey
• and one each from Australia, Austria, Brazil, Hong Kong, Thailand and the USA​

The RHS Botanical Photography Show

Venue: RHS Lawrence Hall, Greycoat Street, Westminster
Dates: 10-12 July 2018

Polina Plotnikova - at a previous show

More information:

• RHS Photography 2018 and 2019  | Botanical Art and Artists - includes list of exhibitors in 2018
• The RHS Photographer of the Year 2018 is an international competition for garden photographers run by the RHS.

Worth a Thousand Words

Venue: RHS Lindley Library 80 Vincent Square LONDON SW1P 2PE
Dates: 5 July - 17 August 2018

This is the "must see" for every visitor to the Botanical Art Show - if for no other reason than it is adjacent to the show in RHS HQ in Vincent Square.

View of part of the exhibition

More information:

• Official RHS webpage
• Worth a Thousand Words - exhibition at the RHS | Botanical Art and Artists - about  the previous Gold Medal winners whose gold-medal winning work acquired by the RHS is in this small exhibition.

Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew

There are two exhibitions on display at the moment - in the same place and for the same dates.

Venue: Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Kew Gardens - which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year
​Dates: 31 March - 16 September 2018

​The Florilegium: The Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney

This is an exhibition by the Florilegium Society of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. It was originally mounted at the RBGS Gardens in Sydney in 2016 as part of the 200th anniversary of the Botanic Gardens. ​

Part of the Florilegium exhibition at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - This is a world class exhibition and sets a very high standard for exhibitions by Florilegia

Links:

• Kew - The Florilegium: The Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney
• My review - "The Florilegium: The Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney" exhibition at Kew Gardens

Down Under II: Works from the Shirley Sherwood Collection

The second exhibition - Down Under II: Works from the Shirley Sherwood Collection - is a follow on from the first exhibition of artwork in the Shirley Sherwood Collection of native Australian and New Zealand plants created by local and international botanical artists.

Natural History Museum

There's always an exhibition of nature botanical or natural history in the Images of Nature Gallery at the Natural History Museum
Venue: Images of Nature Gallery, Natural History Museum

The Art of British Natural History : Images of Nature

When I last visited besides the examples of botanical artwork by many of the great artists from the past there were some paintings of natural habitat by Barbara Nicolson and a reproduction of a watercolour painting of orchids by the late Pandora Sellars

Orchids (1985) by Pandora Sellars (1936-2016)

Rumanian Cultural Institute

The exhibition of botanical paintings included in the Transylvania Florilegium has returned for July and August

• Venue: Romanian Cultural Institute (UK), 1 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8PH (nearest tube is Hyde Park Corner)
• Dates: 2 July to 31 August 2018
• Publishers: Published for The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation by Addison Publications Ltd London
• Artists - see the list in my blog post - Transylvania Florilegium at the Romanian Cultural Institute
• More details: the Highgrove website

Jonathan Cooper Gallery

Finally for the true and dedicated fans there are some excellent artworks by botanical artiosts from England, Scotland, Australia and the USA on display at Jonathan Cooper's 30th anniversary exhibition in Chelsea

• Venue:  Jonathan Cooper Gallery, 20 Park Walk, Chelsea, London, SW10 0AQ
• Dates: 12 - 21 July 2018
• Gallery Opening Times: Mon – Fri (10 – 6.30pm); Sat (11 – 4pm) Closed Bank Holidays
• Admission: Free
• Information: Botanical art at Jonathan Cooper: 30 years exhibition - opens 12 July 2018

Queuing to visit Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art!

Last night was the Private View for the four new art exhibitions at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

We were told that some 8,500 people had visited the Gallery last week and that at the weekend people were queuing to get in!

Rebecca Louise Law: Life in Death

The number of visitors and queues will be in no small part related to the Rebecca Louise Law: Life in Death exhibition which is quite unlike anything I've ever seen before. It's an experience!

Rebecca Louise Law with her exhibition Life in Death at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Kew Gardens

Her exhibition is an installation within the large central space within the Gallery and promotes her passion - the use of preserved plant material as art material.

Plants and flowers that she has collected over a ten year period, have been dried and strung on very thin copper wire garlands suspended from grids attached to the ceiling. There are 350,000 specimens strung on c.1,000 garlands spaced at intervals of around 12 inches.

Rebecca Louise Law: Life in Death #1

It seems as if the entire room is completely full of dried flowers and pods. However a wavy path cut through the middle allows visitors to start on one side and move through to an exit via a diagonal which takes you through an amazing range of plant material.

I'd seen the exhibition previously and kept feeling the need to spin round to look at the exhibit from every angle. Looking at the plant material and the disorientating effect of spinning around in part explains why people take quite a bit of time moving through....

Rebecca Louise Law: Life in Death #2

What was interesting yesterday was that there was a distinct aroma in the air which I hadn;t noticed previously. Almost like being in the centre of a giant pot-pourri.

This exhibition is supported by a separate exhibition (in Gallery 4) of the ancient Egyptian preserved funeral garlands of Ramesses II in Kew's own collection - which date back to 1300BC.  This is a very rare public display of the fragile and beautiful ancient Egyptian wreaths, which, draped over mummies and coffins, accompanied the dead to the afterlife.

Lindsay Sekulowicz: Plantae Amazonicae

This exhibition forms a portrait of the Brazilian Amazon, resulting from collaboration between the artist Lindsay Sekulowicz and Kew’s Science team.

Lindsay Sekulowicz: Plantae Amazonicae combines new artworks by Lindsay with items from the economic botany collection maintained by Kew.

An Apocalyptic Artful Autumn

I went to Kew Gardens yesterday to view their new Artful Autumn exhibitions in the gardens. I hadn't quite bargained on getting Apocalypse Now thrown in for free!

The weather was forecast to be warm and sunny and a great day to visit the gardens to see the sculpture and installations.

However, we've lost confidence in the BBC Weather forecasts ever since the Met. Office lost the contract to provide the weather forecasts. We now find ourselves quite often photographing the BBC weather app showing one thing for a specific location and the weather doing something completely different.

Yesterday was a case in point as the orange sun and the huge dust cloud descended on Kew as we walked around the gardens!  I must confess we spent an awful lot of time just staring at the sky as it got darker and darker!

Below are some views of the various installations

• a sculpture exhibition which has theoretically finished (but is still there) and 
• four installations by four different artists in Cedar Vista.
• Treelings by Woody Fox Willow
• Fungi paintings by Claudia Wegner
• Willow sculptures by Julia Clarke
• Wooden seat sculptures by Nigel Ross

My favourite wood seat sculpture

I'll touch on the Life in Death exhibition by Rebecca Louise Law later this week. Apparently it was very busy last weekend!

Sculpture

Kew Gardens is a brilliant location for a sculpture exhibition - if and when they are presented well.

Two figures near the Palm House

For me the absolute minimum is providing either an online guide or a leaflet for what you're seeing.  Plus a good and uninterrupted view of the sculpture in its setting.

Instead,  all too often at Kew this Autumn, what I've found is:

• a very unhelpful barrier around the sculpture which completely spoils the effect of the sculpture; and/or
• placing an erect large announcement about what it is very close to the sculpture

See below for examples. It's extremely difficult to get a good clean look at the actual sculpture - unless you look at it from an angle which is not the best!

Pandora Sellars (1936-2017)

Pandora Sellars, whose paintings played a key role in the resurgence of botanical art in the UK - and across the world - died last week in her home county of Herefordshire.

Pandora Sellars - Blue Water Lily Nymphaea nouchali var. caerulea, (1995), watercolour on paper

For those of you who have previously followed my blogging about botanical art on Making A Mark, you may wish to read my tribute to her which you can find on my dedicated botanical art news blog. See Pandora Sellars - an appreciation of a great botanical artist to learn how much she meant to botanical artists all over the world.

Some of her paintings - including the iconic blue water lily - are currently on display in the British Artists in the Shirley Sherwood Collection at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew Gardens until 17th September 2017.

You can read more about that exhibition in my blog post back in March about British Artists in the Shirley Sherwood Collection - an exhibition at Kew

She doesn't have a website. However I will be building a page about her life and botanical art career as part of my section related to the Twentieth Century Masters of Botanical Art on my website.

Want to see some very big flower paintings?

I've had any number of people tell me over the years that flower painting isn't really serious art.

For example, I've come across a fair few chaps who select work for their art societies who don't seem to take it very seriously. Granted there's a rather lot of amateurs producing some not very good flower paintings. However, I think most of us could agree that it's possible to say the same thing about landscapes, still life and portraits!!

So why does flower painting get shut out of 'serious' art exhibitions?

Jacqui Pestell MBE and Sharon Tingey GM with their Corpse Flower
- technically this is an unbranched inflorescence - and it's the biggest in the world

I know

• I see more skilled use of watercolour by botanical artists than I do in some of the paintings selected for major exhibitions of watercolour art. However, art isn't all about skill is it?
• from discussions last year with the Marketing Director and Marketing Manager of Fabriano Paper (see A Meeting with Fabriano about Hot Press Paper) that 

botanical artists are very demanding when it comes to testing watercolour paper.

However, anybody who wants to see what the women and a few men who paint plants and flowers can do and have been getting up in recent years should get themselves down to Kew and view the artwork on show.

"British Artists in the Shirley Sherwood Collection" opened at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew on Saturday.

I was at the PV on Monday night, spent Tuesday processing photos and writing blog posts and will be back there back again tomorrow to take a good long hard look at all the paintings in the exhibition.

Rosie Sanders with five of her paintings

You can see more of Rosie Sanders GM's work at

• the Jonathan Cooper Gallery in Park Walk, Chelsea or 
• on her website (prices if you want to do a commission) or 
• in her new book Rosie Sanders' Flowers: A Celebration of Botanical Art (affiliate link). 

If you're visiting the Mall Galleries in the near future, her book was sat top middle of the Featured Books stand last time I was in!

The image at the top of this post is one I've now included on two Facebook Pages. One was prefaced by this comment...

Anybody out there who has any 'namby pamby' concepts about "flower painters" needs to change them!
The women of botanical art paint life-size - even if that means BIG!

This lifesize painting of the Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum) - painted very fast last summer as it reached peak flowering and while it was at its stinkiest (it's also known as "the Corpse Flower") - is by Jacqui Pestell MBE (on left), Sharon Tingey GM (on right) and Işık Güner GM (teaching in Morocco at present) who at the time of painting were all artists and tutors for the Diploma in Botanical Illustration at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh.  It's been donated by Shirley Sherwood to the Kew Collection.

This is how they painted it.

Titan arum painting (Kew exhibition, 2017) from Wild Leaf Reels on Vimeo.

Finally, Coral Guest GM who describes herself as "just a flower painter" who got an awful lot of other women painting large watercolours of plants with her book about Painting Flowers in Watercolour: A Naturalistic Approach (Art Practical) (affiliate link)

She paints large plants from bulbs at their actual full grown lifesize - and some of them are pretty big! At the same time some of the detail is absolutely delicate and exquisite. Check it out and see for yourself!

Coral Guest with five of her paintings in the Shirley Sherwood Collection

The exhibition is on at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art in Kew Gardens until 17th September 2017. It's open every day until 10am to 5.30pm

There's a lot more very fine art by very fine artists in the show - of which more later.... [UPDATE - see British Artists in the Shirley Sherwood Collection - a review and a timeline ]

More of my blog posts about this exhibition

• British Artists in the Shirley Sherwood Collection - an exhibition at Kew
• British Botanical Artists - photographed with their paintings

About Marianne North

Marianne North is a woman who painted 800 paintings of plants and flowers, representing over 900 species from 17 countries on 6 different continents in 14 years.

Below is a map at the beginning of her autobiography which indicates where she went painting plants.

Countries Marianne North travelled to and painted plants and flowers

Life begins at 40

All this started after the age of 40 while travelling solo, painting in oils, dressed in long Victorian dresses and making plans for a new Gallery to house her collection of paintings when she got back to England.

Admittedly her family was well connected and she was comfortably off, but she still had to endure an awful lot while off painting in the back of beyond!

The Marianne North Gallery

This is now the only permanent solo exhibition by a woman artist in the UK - and you can find it at the Marianne North gallery in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

The prompt to complete my new page About Marianne North on my website about Botanical Art and Artists is a television programme about Marianne North which is on BBC4 tonight at 9pm.  It's called Kew's Forgotten Queen. You'll be able to find it on iPlayer on this link after it has aired.

In the meantime, if you'd like to find out more about Marianne North, the new page covers

• the timeline of her life and travels
• her paintings and painting methods
• The Marianne North Gallery at Kew

Nature's Bounty at Kew - a review (closes 31st January)

This is the last week of the Nature's Bounty exhibition at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew Gardens. It closes on Sunday 31st January (10am to 3.45pm).

• The exhibition is about the paintings of fruit, vegetables, seeds and nuts in the collection of Dr. Shirley Sherwood. 
• The flowers which are included are those which include the method used for propagation associated with the flower - which is usually seeds or seeds within berries.

The Yellow Lotus painting by Beverley Allen anchors a wall of tropical plants in the main gallery

It's complemented by works from the collection of Kew. I'm going to focus on paintings owned by Shirley Sherwood for this review

many of these paintings and some paintings on show are the culmination of months of observation, waiting for a pear or apple to ripen so that every stage can be shown.

It's perhaps pertinent to comment that one of the aims of very many botanical artists is to have their work added to this very important and prestigious collection.  It is after all a collection which prompted the very first gallery of botanical art in the world.

After that the next aim is for it to be exhibited in one of the exhibitions of works in her collection at Kew! Dr Sherwood has after all got some c.1,000 paintings in the collection from 25 years of collecting. It's a very real distinction for a botanical artist to have your work chosen for one of her exhibitions at Kew.

[As with the 2015 RHS review, the illness and demise of two much loved and aged kitties accounted for a very odd year last year when it came to reviewing exhibitions. Which explains why I'm only reviewing it now.]

I saw it for the first time last week but was extremely impressed. I found I lingered a tad too long with my magnifier on some paintings which had me intrigued as to technique and skill in both drawing and painting.  So I'm going to try and get back to see it again next week before it closes.

One thing worth mentioning is that the exhibition is beautifully hung with clear themes emerging as you go round. These are not announced to you - the gallery allows you to be intelligent and detect the gentle shift from one type of subject to another. Plus it looks good too!

The Featured Artists and Works

One of the things I particularly like about The Shirley Sherwood Collection is the fact that we get to find out about botanical artists from all around the world.

There isn't a book to go with the exhibition. That's because you can also see many of the works in this exhibition - except more recent acquisitions - in her two books 'A Passion for Plants' and 'A New Flowering'.  For those of us who are huge fans of the books it's a real pleasure to be able to see the paintings 'up close and personal'.

However I do think it's a pity that we don't have a public record of the artists featured in the exhibition and the works on display.  The gallery kindly sent me the labels for the paintings in the exhibition from the gallery so I could make sure I spelt all the artists' names correctly as some of them were new to me.  It occurred to me I could create that public record - which is so important for credibility in terms of exhibitions.  Hence the list of featured artists and works below.

You will find below that

• featured artists are listed by the country they live in
• Links to the websites (or related sites) of the artists are embedded in their name.  Some of these took some tracking down!
• All the works identified are watercolour on paper unless otherwise indicated in captions 
• Quotations identified after an artist's name and paintings are brief and from the artist's website.
• Images: 
• Gallery shots copyright Katherine Tyrrell (by permission of The Shirley Sherwood Galley)
• Artwork - copyright the artist