My Story

I studied visual art education in Sydney at the National Art School and University of NSW, and later completed Masters’ degrees, in Education and Applied Science. In 2007 I was awarded a Doctor of Education degree. My forty-year career involved visual arts teaching in high schools and later in teacher education and consultancy.

Since retiring in 2008 I have devoted myself full-time to art making and volunteering in various community organisations. These include the BDAS Botanical Artists at Bowral Art Gallery NSW from 2012 to 2017, where I coordinated group meetings and organised exhibitions. From 2017 to 2020, I edited and contributed to the Tendrils botanical art E-newsletter, distributed Australia-wide.

In addition to my artistic interests, I have been a bush care volunteer, plant propagator and volunteer with the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. I was also a volunteer with the Robertson Environment Protection Society (REPS) in NSW, from 2019 – 2021, as project coordinator and illustrator for their new book, A Guide to the Robertson Rainforest: Trees, Shrubs, Vines and Ferns of the Yarrawa Brush (REPS, 2021).

I am a volunteer at the Gold Coast Regional Botanic Gardens in Queensland. In 2021 I began as a Herbarium volunteer and in 2022, I established the Friends Botanical Art Group.

I have exhibited widely in NSW in the Southern Highlands, Illawarra and Shoalhaven regions, as well as in Sydney and Canberra at the Australian National Botanic Gardens. I have work held in private collections in Australia and Europe.

What motivates my art making

I am driven by two life-long passions – art and science. In my art practice, there are no boundaries between these two disciplines – they function interchangeably. 

A plant’s habit and anatomy, determined by the physical conditions under which it grows, are as important as the grace and beauty of the shapes, colours and textures it takes on through its life cycle. My work often depicts a plant’s life cycle, as in the example above – Stages of Grape Growth.

I often make a series of images of the same plant, or several plants from a significant site, because I always find something more to say than can be achieved in a single image.

Making images of rare and threatened species is very important to me. Undertaking the drawings for the Robertson Rainforest field guide gave me a wonderful opportunity to draw plants from a critically endangered ecological community (see Gallery section of this website). 

I hope that through these artworks, I can make a small contribution to help raise public awareness about the urgent need to protect and conserve our native flora.

My processes, style
and media used

All plants have a ‘story’ to tell if we pay attention. As a botanical artist my job is to tell their ‘story’ using a visual language.

Making an image of a plant is like painting a portrait of a person. To be true to the plant’s character you must not only pay attention to its physical attributes, but also go beyond those to discover what lies beneath its mere physical form. Plants have ‘gesture’ in the way they grow and the shapes, colours and textures they take on. They are the result of the conditions in which they live, e.g. the soil, microbes beneath the surface, sunlight, water and other life forms that share their habitat, including us.

To know a plant thoroughly, so I can do it justice, I always prefer to observe it, as much as possible, in its natural growing conditions. My first step, therefore, is always observation, in the field if possible, and then with a piece of the plant, a living specimen. With rare and endangered plants, I may only have my field experience to work from, so observations, sketches on-site and back up photographs are all I have available.

Once back in the studio with a specimen, I will photograph it more thoroughly, especially if there are flowers and/or fruit, so that I can accurately record the colours. I follow this straight away with some colour tests in whatever medium I plan to use, mixing and matching colours to the specimen while its fresh. After that, if I have enough, I take a piece of the specimen and press it, while I pin the rest up onto a display board in my studio and allow it to fall into its natural ‘habit’ shape. This specimen will now retain its natural shape for months, giving me the basic lines for further drawings. The pressed specimen gives me details of parts of the plant which I can observe close-up. If I need more information I sometimes dissect and view these parts under a microscope.  

It is very important in these early stages to research botanical descriptions of the plant. I familiarise myself with the scientific language used to describe such things as leaf shape, surface, size, margins, veins, flowers (male and female flowers for instance) and fruit structure. This is where I can find out details that have been observed by an expert, and then go back to the plant and see those things for myself. Some details are very small and may not be visible without using a lens or microscope. On some occasions, I have worked with a botanist who would direct my drawing by requiring me to give certain parts of the plant special attention.

One example of my art making process was with the Helicia glabriflora, (its designated status is rare). I took several photos of it in the field and later in the studio. The colour details in the studio photo give much more information about the flowers’ structure and colours. The drawing used in A Guide to the Robertson Rainforest (p. 43) is shown here as well. I haven’t painted it in colour yet, but have the reference photos as well as a pressed specimen, meaning I can come back to it long after my initial field visit. This tree was found growing on the side of a quiet road in Robertson NSW.

Once I am ready to move on to the final image, I decide which medium I want to use e.g. graphite, charcoal, pastel, pen and ink, watercolour, acrylic, oil paint, coloured pencil, or printmaking. I use them all. At this point I also decide if the image will be strictly a botanical illustration, as with the drawings for the Robertson Rainforest book, or a more abstract, interpretative image (see Gallery section for examples). In some works, I use actual plant materials to make collagraph plates for printmaking.