Not sure what exactly it is about a badly groomed or recalcitrant shrub that is endearing. But they generally are. Even more so if found in a slightly less than salubrious locale. They’re like the kid that just doesn’t realise how special they are, you just want to help their self-esteem while not changing them …

Yesterday’s Google Doodle  (27th May) celebrated the birthday of marine biologist, nature writer and conservationist Rachel Carson (1907-64). Her dismay and outrage at the impact of pesticides on the environment and public health led to her writing the influential book Silent Spring in 1962. The illustration was designed by Doodlier Matthew Cruickshank. Gaining inspiration from her quote ‘In nature nothing exists alone’, he …

If you are an emerging artist looking for a place to sell your art online there are an increasing number of options to choose from. The percentage of sales acquired this way is still low compared to local art fairs, dealers and word of mouth, but it is on the up as online galleries make …

Forget Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst – where are their plants? Our favourite of the celebrated ‘Young British Artists’ that studied at London’s Goldsmiths College in the late 1980s is Gary Hume (born 1962). A painter who fairly recently (end of last year) had a retrospective with another of our favourite artists Patrick Caulfield at …

Today we look at two artists who took inspiration from still life past masters to create their own floral artwork, each with its own message and purpose. Dan Tobin Smith’s Still Life with Flowers Currently exhibiting at The Storeroom at L’Entrepôt in Dalston until June 8th as part of this year’s Chelsea Fringe, Dan Tobin Smith’s Still …

There is only one thing better than a postage stamp rendered with a plant-inspired design, and that is a complete collection of postage stamps ever issued within a specific plant area. Thematically ‘plants’ is too wide an area to begin a foray into the most interesting OCD activity ever invented. It needs to be narrowed down a little. This can be done …

Meryl Watts (1910 – 1992) was born in East London and worked predominantly as a painter and woodcut printer. After studying at the Blackheath School of Arts under the tutelage of another eminent British colour printmaker John Edgar Platt (1886-1967), she went on to achieve success in her own right, exhibiting at both the Royal …

Last week we showed the work of an artist who uses human bodies to create portraits of plants – today it is the other way around – where portraits of people are formed of fruit, vegetables and occasionally other things. Today’s artist is a little less contemporary. The Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo was employed at the Habsburg Court in …

The composition of Dutch still life artist Joke Frima’s (b.1952) paintings, choice of plant, combined with her hyperrealistic style, give her botanical work a distinctive feel. In some of her paintings we are drawn into sweeping botanicalscapes by getting a low-down, enmeshed perspective. In other works, like her still life arrangements, she manages to evoke …

Since the turn of the century the following nine artists have used flowers or plants in a call for peace, to counteract images of violence or to highlight social injustice. We celebrate them all here along with the life-affirming nature and beauty of plants. 1. Collages of Mister Blick, 2014 Blick’s collages substitute weapons with …