This article was published in Art of England magazine July / August 2005

Botanical art is currently enjoying a major renaissance. In the first of a series of articles, botanical painter and tutor Marianne McPhie explores the reasons for its increasing popularity.

Botanical art, where art and science meet, is perhaps more relevant and important today than it’s ever been. Whereas in the past botanical artists took up their brushes with wonder and excitement to record what had never been seen before, these days it is our increasingly urgent and melancholy duty to paint plants that may never be seen again. In Britain, one in five of our native flora is at risk of extinction; worldwide the prognosis is gloomier.

Botanical drawing and painting is a highly-disciplined field of art. It demands accuracy and attention. A specific form of scientific illustration, it has two goals: firstly to explain the plant or flower to you the viewer, so that its species and growth habits are immediately and clearly identifiable; and secondly, to present this information as artistically as possible. Your task as a botanical artist is therefore doubly challenging: how to strike a balance between understanding the plant biologically and delighting the eye aesthetically.

This ancient field of art seems at odds with both the pace and preoccupations of our century, but maybe we find the amount of time, patience and dogged perseverance this art form requires an antidote - a relief - for brains exhausted by this flash-by, instant-access computer age. Botanical art is like gardening: you are working with nature and hoping, as the philosopher A. C. Grayling writes, to “water and mulch the soul, and let it bloom”. It is most definitely what the Australian art critic Robert Hughes would call “slow art: art that holds time as a vase holds water; art that isn’t merely sensational, that doesn’t get its message across in ten seconds, that isn’t falsely iconic….art that makes you think and feel”.

Unfortunately, we often fall into the trap of believing that photographs and films tell us the most truth about what we see. They don’t; they show us a different version. Botanical art is another account of the truth: an honest, objective “mirror of nature”. Impervious to fashion or trends, it quietly invites you, in the words of the Japanese artist Hokusai, to “penetrate the mystery of things”. Through its intensity of seeing, its intimacy of detail, we are drawn - guided almost - into a more fully experienced relation to the object we are looking at. The best of botanical art answers all your questions, and embodies the singular, stirring vision of the artist and his nature - two people drawing an iris will produce two very different versions of the same flower. A camera cannot do this: it records rather than reveals.

The story of botanical art is also the story of medicine, exploration and horticulture. Its traditions and conventions (no shadows; ‘floating’ in inactive space, etc.) arose out of scientific protocol, linking past masters with modern artists in an inspiring (and for me thoroughly reassuring) sequence spanning a thousand years. ‘A New Flowering: 1000 Years of Botanical Art’ is the lead exhibition at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum until September this year. Its guest curator, Dr. Shirley Sherwood, has brilliantly counterpoised historical treasures from the city’s libraries and museums with paintings from her collection of contemporary botanical artists from around the world. Alongside antique herbals and illuminated manuscripts you will see highly original interpretations of similar and familiar subjects by gifted and skilled modern artists, powerful evidence of a tradition that, happily, continues to thrive and reach new heights.

Marianne McPhie has an Art History degree and has been drawing and painting all her life. She runs botanical painting courses throughout the year in Southwell, Nottinghamshire.
For details e-mail: mariannemcphie@btinternet.com, or visit www.mariannemcphie.co.uk