Watercolour on vellum
220 x 320 mm.
Annie spent her early years in Singapore before returning to the UK where she attended various schools around the UK followed by a Foundation Course at Cambridge Art School before completing her degree at Kingston upon Thames School of Art and Design.
With a busy career in graphic design for 30 years, she decided to devote more time to painting, combining a fascination with plants and a longing to use paints and brushes again. She enrolled on a Botanical painting course at the English Gardening School in 2000 under the tuition of Anne Marie Evans and going on to exhibit at the RHS, a solo show at Chateau de Villandry, France and she continues to exhibit in galleries in London and the USA.
Her work is included in the prestigious Highgrove Florilegium, under the aegis of the His Royal Highness Prince Charles, Prince of Wales charitable foundation and also in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and work is currently on show at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery. Paintings are in the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Pittsburg and she is an ASBA member, winning awards at a recent New York Horticultural Society exhibition. In 2004 she was involved with starting the Hampton Court Palace Florilegium with a small group of artists and is a Fellow member.
A collection of fruit and vegetable portraits are displayed in the National Trust Sissinghurst Gardens restaurant and paintings have been commissioned to illustrate publications in the USA and the UK. Her paintings are now in many public and private collections worldwide.
Annie works on paper and on vellum, paintings are usually life size and always observed from the living specimens of which she collects and grows many herself, from the familiar to the exotic, flowers and vegetables or a simple decaying leaf. By studying every aspect of the plant, together with her drawing skills and use of colour washes and fine brush work she achieves glowingly realistic, three dimensional paintings depicting the characteristics of each subject.
