Banksia coccinea from Ferdinand Bauer's 1813 work Illustrationes Florae Novae Hollandiae

A botanical illustrator is a person who paints, sketches or otherwise illustrates botanical subjects such as trees and flowers. The job requires great artistic skill, attention to fine detail, and technical botanical knowledge. Typical illustrations will be in watercolour, in life size, or if not, the scale shown, and show face and reverse of leaves, flowers, bud, seed and root system.

Botanical illustration is sometimes used as a type for attribution of a botanical name to a taxon. The ability of botanists to conserve a dried specimens, or restrictions in safe transport, has meant illustrations have been nominated as the type for that name. Many minute plants, which may only be viewed under a microscope, are often identified by an illustration to overcome the difficulties in using slide mounted specimens. The standards for this are by international agreement (Art 37.5 of the Vienna Code, 2006).

History[link]

The use of illustrations was frequently seen in the herbals, seed catalogues and popular works of natural history. The illustrations produced during the eighteenth and nineteenth century are regarded as both appealing and scientifically valid. The finer detail of the printing processes, greatly improving at this time, allowed artists such as Franz and Ferdinand Bauer to depict the minute aspects of the subject. The use of exploded details would further illustrate the description given in the accompanying text. These details allowed a non scientific audience to go some way in identifying the species, the widening interest in natural history and horticulture was an inducement to the production of many Floras and regular publications.

Many books and publication continued to use the illustrators, even after printed matter began to incorporate photography. It would be many years before the colour printing would equal the illustrators plates. The accuracy and craft of the illustrators had developed in tandem with the botanists concerned, the work came to be accepted as important to the botanists and their institutions. The illustrated publication, Curtis's Botanical Magazine (1787), was to eventually appoint an official artist. The 220 year old magazine, long associated with the Linnaean Society and Kew Gardens, is now primarily one of finer botanical illustration. A stream of the finest illustrators to appear in print have been featured in the magazine.

The contribution of botanical illustrators continues to be praised and sought, very fine examples continue to be produced. In the 1980s, Celia Rosser undertook to illustrate every Banksia species for the masterwork, The Banksias. When another species was described after its publication, Banksia rosserae, it was named to honour her mammoth accomplishment. Other illustrators, such as the profuse illustrator Matilda Smith, have been specifically honoured for this work.

Electrotype - 'nature printing' by Alois Auer (1853)

Famous illustrators[link]

Famous botanical illustrators include:

• Alois Auer
• James Andrew
• Elizabeth Blackwell (illustrator)
• Ferdinand Bauer
• Franz Bauer
• ‎Harry Bolus
• Olivia Marie Braida-Chiusano
• Priscilla Susan Bury
• Gillian Condy
• Dioscorides
• Sydenham Edwards
• Georg Dionysius Ehret
• Anne-Marie Evans
• Barbara Everard
• Walter Hood Fitch
• Frances W. Horne
• Barbara Jeppe
• Kawahara Keiga
• Cythna Letty
• Christine Marais
• Margaret Mee
• Philippa Nikulinsky
• Marianne North
• Sydney Parkinson
• Jenny Phillips Botanical Artist
• Pierre-Joseph Redouté
• Lewis Roberts (naturalist)
• Celia Rosser
• Ellis Rowan
• Vera Scarth-Johnson
• Jill Smythies
• Matilda Smith
• Pandora Sellars
• James Sowerby
• Elizabeth Twining
• Ellaphie Ward-Hilhorst

The Linnaean Society of London awards the Jill Smythies Award for botanical illustration.

See also[link]

• List of Australian botanical illustrators

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• de Bray, Lys (2001). The Art of Botanical Illustration: A history of classic illustrators and their achievements. Quantum Publishing Ltd., London. ISBN 1-86160-425-4.
• "Women Illustrators". The Art of Botanical Illustration. University of Delaware Library. http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/hort/women.htm. Retrieved 2008-10-02. 
• "Home page". Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. Carnegie Mellon University. http://huntbot.andrew.cmu.edu/HIBD/Default.shtml#top. Retrieved 2008-10-02. 

Helen FitzGerald (born 1966, Melbourne, Australia) is a novelist and screenwriter. She is best known for her debut novel Dead Lovely, first published by Allen & Unwin in September 2007.

Background[link]

FitzGerald, the twelfth of thirteen children, was brought up in the country town of Kilmore, Victoria,^[1] and moved to the UK in 1991. She started writing while working as a criminal justice social worker, latterly with serious sex offenders in Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison. She now lives in Glasgow with her husband and two children.

Writing[link]

FitzGerald began as a screenwriter, producing a series of educational children's dramas for BBC Scotland. She subsequently sold a number of screenplays, but none was ultimately produced and – frustrated by the film and television industry – she turned to novel-writing. She is a Bestseller in Holland and Germany.

Her first book, Dead Lovely, was completed in 2006. It was picked up by publishers Ambo/Anthos(Netherlands) and subsequently by Allen & Unwin (Australia/ New Zealand), Faber & Faber (UK), Calmann-Levy (France) and Piemme (Italy).

"The Devil's staircase" was published in 2009, Polygon.

Helen's third novel was "My Last Confession", 2009 Faber & Faber.

The fourth novel, "Bloody Women" also came out in 2009, Polygon.

Novels[link]

"Amelia O'Donohue is SO not a virgin", a teen novel coming out November 2010 in America, Source Books

"The Donor", Helen's fifth adult novel due to come out in the UK Spring 2010, Faber & Faber

"Hot Flush", for reluctant readers, due 2011, Barrington Stoke.

Critical reaction[link]

Some commentators noted that FitzGerald's first book, while generally described as a crime novel, did not follow the traditional rules of the genre. They argued that it belonged to a different, more psychologically complex tradition, characterised by the dark humour and flawed anti-heroines of writers such as Tama Janowitz and Fay Weldon. Novelist Mark Abernethy wrote of FitzGerald: "She has managed to do what Fay Weldon did in The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, which is to find the joke in what appalls us.^[2]"

Australian critic Sally Murphy described the novel as compelling but hard to classify, with "elements of chick-lit mixed with ghastly scenes of murder and retribution",^[3] while Adelaide writer Cath Kenneally highlighted FitzGerald's technique of underpinning audacious and potentially shocking material - "working blue" - with "sociological acumen".^[4]

Nomination for 2010 Spinetingler Award[link]

On 31 March 2010 "The Devil's Staircase" was nominated for the 2010 Spinetingler Award in America, despite the book never being published there.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Author Website
• Author Blog

Olivia Peguero
Olivia Peguero
Nationality	Dominican - American
Field	Painter, sculptor

Olivia Peguero is a Dominican contemporary landscape and botanical artist. Painting most of the year in the Dominican Republic and Florida, she is known for producing all of her studies and the majority of her finished pieces en plein air. Unlike many other Dominican artist, her works are created in oil using a more traditional European style, many times depicting life as birth, existence and death within her flowers. Two common themes present in Peguero art are the conservation of old growth Dominican forests and pride in Dominican heritage. In 2005, she made news when a private collector requested a commission and was turned down for asking her to paint a beach in the DR but label the art as it was from another Caribbean country. In 2007, Mrs. Peguero enlisted the help of a few important collectors and corporate sponsors to form the Peguero Arte Libros Foundation and the Art Books for Education Program. Today, a large percentage of the proceeds from the sale of her art are donated to the foundation.

Early life and education[link]

Olivia Peguero was born in the Dominican Republic, and grew up in the small towns of Miches on the east coast, and Las Salinas in the southwest. She attended the Mahatma Gandhi secondary school in Santo Domingo and after graduation, moved to New York to join her parents who had immigrated a few years prior. Although she was mostly isolated from the arts as a child, she was strongly influenced by the Dutch Masters style and it seemed only natural that the same style be applied in a lush, Caribbean environment. Today, many people associate Peguero art as only tropical or island oriented, but much of her work and training focused on mastering traditional architecual, botanical and landscape methods with her early paintings often being completed in and around the Lake District in England.

Olivia Peguero painting (2006) En plein air in Miches,Dominican Republic

Training and education[link]

Mrs. Peguero attended university in New York and Florida and continued to refine her style during the course of her training. She completed a Bachelors Degree of Fine Art Studio Painting from Florida Atlantic University, Florida, a Bachelors Degree in Management Information Systems from Mercy College, New York and a Master Degree in Business Administration, MBA from Nova University, Florida.

Peguero Arte Libros Foundation[link]

Mrs. Peguero is the founder of the Peguero Arte Libros Foundations US 501(c)(3) and the Art Books for Education Project that focuses on art education for young Dominican children in rural areas. In 2007, the case was presented that even today, many Dominican children in rural areas are not exposed to and do not have the opportunity to learn fine arts such as painting, sculpture, poetry and story writing. And for a country so rich in the music and dance arts to not have an emphasis in these areas was a loss for every child. One of the programs currently under implementation by the foundation is to supply rural schools with a set of Spanish language art books that cover painting, sculpture, poetry and story writing. These would then be given to the school for their library and as some schools don’t have a library, it would be the start of a long term collection to benefit all students. ArteLibros.org

Summer Hay in Borrowdale, (2003)—Borrowdale, Lake District, England

Art and the preservation of the Dominican Rainforest[link]

The Mariposa Cocoa Preserve is a private preservation initiative owned and run by the Peguero family that combines sustainable organic cocoa farming practices and forest management with the protection of wildlife and nature. Located just west of the town of Miches, in the El Seibo province of the Dominican Republic, the preserve is only accessible via footpath and horseback. The countryside within the preserve was a primary landscape subject in many of the earliest Peguero paintings. Tours of the Mariposa Cocoa Preserve is by invitation only with an annual artist expedition.

[MariposaCocoa.com]

References[link]

• Personal website
• Mateo, Armando "Arte Dominicano Actual: Arte de Miches: Peguero Mostrar"
• Marion Allexia, "Latin Arts America: Women in Art: New York. Issue May, 2001"
• Manuel, "Thats Dominican: Dominican Artist 2011" [1]
• Dominican Today Periódico "Art of Miches to go on benefit tour for the Peguero Arte Libros Foundation. 2011", [2]

External links[link]

• Gallery of Olivia Peguero's artwork
• Plein Air Society England
• Women Painters of the Southeast (WPSE)