HE art of botanical painting is a considerable one. It is not enough to produce an attractive picture: a significant number of those examining it will be very familiar with the original plant and rather a lot of those will carry in their mind’s eye a favourite image of it from one wildflower book or another. Just as we sniff at the performance of a piece of familiar music played a little differently from our favourite rendering, there is a resistance to change in the brain of the viewer. We can’t help making comparisons. Is a flower painting a technical exercise or is it a pretty thing to hang on a wall? It has to be both—and the life of the critic will always be easier
