Margaret Flockton Award 2012

The Margaret Flockton Award commemorates the contribution Margaret Flockton made to Australian scientific botanical illustration.

The Friends of the Botanic Gardens, as a major fundraising organisation and supporter of the Royal Botanic Gardens & Domain Trust, is pleased to sponsor the Margaret Flockton Award for Botanical Illustration. Through its members, the Friends is committed to funding projects that embellish and enrich the four estates of the Royal Botanic Gardens & Domain Trust. In supporting this Award, the Friends helps the Trust and its staff to continue to pursue excellence in all that they do. The Friends also holds a biennial exhibition of botanical art: Botanica 2012 - see Friends' Events.

The exhibition

When: Monday 2 April - Friday 29 June 2012, 10 am-4 pm.
Where: Red Box Gallery, National Herbarium of NSW, Mrs Macquaries Rd, Sydney
Cost: Entry to both the installation and exhibition is free - selected works for SALE
Enquiries: 02  9231 8111 

Location of Red Box Gallery - Click on map to enlarge 

2012 Winning Entries

1st prize ($5000) - Klei Sousa from Brazil for Mimosa acutistipula

2nd prize ($2000) - Anita Walsmit Sachs from The Netherlands for Lepisanthes senegalensis

Highly Commended - Pauline Dewar from Victoria, Australia for Asphodelus fistulosus

Highly Commended - Susana Ferreira de Souza from Brazil for Dorstenia arifolia

Highly Commended - Lucy Smith from the United Kingdom for Elaeocarpus macrocerus

This year’s Margaret Flockton Award winners were up against a total of 14 artists and 21 submitted artworks. Some notable past winners of the Flockton Award (Sandra Burrows, Rogerio Lupo, Edmundo Saavedra Vidal, as well as curators Lesley Elkan and Catherine Wardrop) were also invited to exhibit (not compete); thus the total works hail from Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, South Korea, Spain, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, USA, Mexico and Brazil.

After starting training in 2005, Klei Sousa from Brazil, the winner of this year’s award for the pen and ink illustration Mimosa acutistipula, has had a quick rise to the top in the profession he’s passionate about.

‘I became a professional botanical illustrator in 2007 and since then have entered the Margaret Flockton Award every year (five times). Each time I try to do something better than the previous year and I always hope that I can win,’ Mr Sousa said. Klei Sousa has worked at the Instituto de Botanica de Sao Paulo, first entering the Margaret Flockton Award in 2008, winning 2nd prize in 2009, and has had Highly Commended awards every other year.

‘Competing is not always very well received but in this case, at least for me, it is a great way to constantly improve my artwork. Now I’ve won, I’ll invest the money in my career and buy a stereomicroscope and take my family on holidays.’

Mr Sousa chose the Mimosa acutistipula (a Brazilian shrub) under instruction from a student of botany who is researching the genus.

In her second year of exhibiting at the Margaret Flockton Awards, the 2nd prize winner Anita Walsmit Sachs, who works at Leiden University and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at the Hague in the Netherlands, said she intends to donate her prize money to the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden, the oldest botanic garden in the Netherlands to buy furniture for the classroom where she teaches botanical drawing workshops.

‘The Award is doubly good because my career as a botanical artist has also been given a great boost. I am really thrilled with the prize, as I try to make people aware of the beauty of scientific drawings and their scientific but also decorative value,’ Ms Walsmit Sachs said.

Ms Walsmit Sach’s subject, Lepisanthes senegalensis (an African tree), is part of a series made from the Flora of Nepal.  It was a commission from the National Herbarium, Leiden University and the ‘Naturalis’.

The opening night, Thursday 30 March, was a combined event with another Friends of the Botanic Gardens exhibition Botanica - The Masters and Moore and was a resounding success for both. Following an enthusiastic welcome by Professor David Mabberley, Executive Director, the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust, the Governor of New South Wales, Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir AC then responded with her own deeply felt appreciation of all forms of botanical art. The Governor went on to announce the winning and highly commended awards, with Victorian artist Pauline Dewar being present to receive her highly commended award from Her Excellency. Gavin Smith also received Lucy Smith’s highly commended award in her absence.

Visitors to both exhibitions appreciated the comparisons between the highly accurate and ‘mind-bogglingly’ detailed tonal works of the Margaret Flockton Award against the glorious painted images in Botanica. The Friends are hoping both exhibitions will be able to enjoy such ‘cross pollination’ again in the future. 

Judges

The judges for the 2012 Award were Dr Marco Duretto, Research Scientist, the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust; Julia Sideris, scientific journals production, the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust and Beverly Allen, botanical artist and president of the Florilegium Society of the Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney.

Judges comments

The key to a scientific illustration is the accuracy, even at higher magnification, and it is essential that the artist not use artistic licence, unclear lines, hesitant mark making or adding random elements simply to make the illustration interesting. The better plates are well constructed so the observer is drawn into the plate, can easily and logically navigate it and quickly identify key features for the species or group in question. Successful illustrations reduce and reproduce accurately and are not cluttered with features not useful in identification or of scientific interest.

All finalists chosen this year were equal in respect of scientific accuracy, strong botanical narrative, fine draughtsmanship and appropriate technique. In the final assessment, the recognised constants in the visual arts were used to distinguish the winners: a focal point which draws the eye into the illustration to explore, and a compositional balance that encourages a comfortable and prolonged visual engagement. This delicate visual ‘storytelling’ and the artist’s own stylistic rendering are the aesthetic qualities which transform a scientific illustration beyond a diagrammatic illumination of facts to evoke an emotional response to the subject. 

Judging criteria

1. Accurate  interpretation and portrayal of the plant characters and diagnostic features in the botanical description
2. Technical merit
3. Artistic merit
4. Composition
5. Reproducibility

Click here for further information on Margaret Flockton and the Margaret Flockton Award.

Supported by

The Maple-Brown family

Exhibition venue