I completed my Diploma with the Society of Botanical Artists, and was very pleased to achieve a Distinction. This is one of pieces in my final portfolio, a head of a Romanesco cauliflower. I love the fractal effect of the florets as the grow – botany and mathematics in one!
I was asked to fulfil a commission for the installation of Bishop Helen-Ann of Newcastle. She had asked NCEA Dukes secondary school to design a customised wrapper for the Tony’s Chocolonely bars to be distributed during the service. The design represents Bishop Helen-Ann’s journey so far starting from Coldingham where she was baptised and features a koru, the Maori word for an unfurling fern which represents new life, because of +Helen-Ann’s time spent in New Zealand, and a Celtic motif to represent +Helen-Ann’s new episcopal area in the Diocese of Newcastle. I took the original design, brightened the colours and adjusted the text layout so that the design was ready to send to the Tony’s Chocolonely website.
The seed for this design began with the Northumbria Community’s Celtic Daily Prayer Book 2 meditations for Day 3 and Day 31 which are excerpts from William Brodrick’s The Sixth Lamentation, and in particular the line ‘We have to be candles’.
I started with a layout doodled in the notebook I carry round with me. By the time we were on retreat at Nether Springs in February, I had most of the design in place, and the colours worked out, and included a motif from my ‘Wings and Waves Celtic Cross’ design to tie it in with previous artwork.
We had seen the effects of Storm Arwen in toppling trees and taking out power lines, but it seemed to me that that would be nothing compared to a storm at sea, where the squall would not just fill the sky but the sea that the boat rested on would be wild and incredibly dangerous. That led to the design of the border as a surrounding stormy sea, but with the candle flames reaching out into it.
I am delighted to say that I had a place in the 2021 RHS Botanical Art and Photography Show, which was at the Saatchi Gallery, London in 2021, covering the dates of the Chelsea Flower Show. The Saatchi Gallery was used as the usual venue, Lindley Hall, was being used as a vaccination centre.
My exhibit was titled ‘Tomatoes: Fruit and flower development’. My six paintings showed examples of how cascading mutations in the genes of tomatoes have generated the changes from the tiny pea-sized fruit in Central America, to the variety and size of fruit grown throughout the world today. The picture above is of the variety ‘Tlacolula’ which shows mutations in the LC and FAS genes, resulting in a multi-locule tomato, and also a mutation in the OVATE gene resulting in a pear-shaped fruit.
To my suprise and pleasure, I was awarded a Gold medal for my exhibit.
I was asked to design the artwork by Judith, the owner of Fine Fettle
Fibres, for her newly commissioned yarn, Northumbrian Rose, which is a beautifully soft blend of Blue Faced Leicester wool from Hexam, alpaca from Old Felton, and 40% rose fibres. The label also includes the black and white Northumbrian tartan, and picked up on the colours of all eight yarns in the original range.
It can be seen at https://www.finefettlefibres.uk/yarn/fine-fettle-fibres-northumbrian-rose
