Foraging plants in the norwegian mountains – 4. History of the project

March 30, 2023March 20, 2023 | Gaynor's Flora

**This picture was taken** **4 July, it had snowed and it was bitter cold with a wind behind it!**

Weather is very changeable in the Norwegian mountains and although mid-summer, it can snow. This can make it difficult not only in choosing species to paint, but also finding them and making sketches in the open.

I still. hadn’t decided which species I was going to choose to follow up on, although I did have a rough idea. A lot depended on how easy it would be for me to access the plants and whether I could find them in the vicinity of the cottage we rented each year.

Several of the plants I had been thinking about had fairly small fruit and elements of the plants were also very small. How was I going to display this? One plant had large leaves and two had very tiny leaves. Some plants lived in very boggy areas, several had access to water but the roots weren’t lying in water, and one was happiest in dry areas such as sandy pine forests. Some of them intermingled.

How was I going to work this out? I wanted an exhibit that drew together seven different plants into a whole.

I started by just sketching mountain plants with fruit that were edible (not toxic). This started my several-year long period of ‘Constructive Procrastination’!

I started painting the final pieces in 2021 after moving back to Norway.

Sketching

**First page in my sketchbook – Cloudberry sketches**

Today, my sketch pages are rather a mess. They started out beautifully organised, but as time has progressed, I have added more sketches, more information, and more colour matching. This means that my sketch book is now not a beautiful work of art but a tool to get enough information for completing a final composition.

This is the first page in the sketchbook I kept for this series. You can see the very first sketch of the cloudberry leaf that I did in 2014 whilst teaching at Åsgårdstrand. In later years I was able to add both male and female flowers actual size and enlarged dissections. BUT, I was stupid enough to forget to get all the measurements and have spent the last two summers chasing to find the relevant pieces at the right time of year.

I had other pages with Cloudberry sketches including research done on the net, and referencing different photos I had taken, but none gave me all the information I needed!

It took me years to catch up on this plant as every year is so different. One can’t guarantee that flowering will happen at the same time each year, or, as in this case that you find both sexes of flower. One year, we had planned our trip from the UK to coincide with a roughly general fruit picking time for this plant. But when we got up to the cottage, everything was long over as it had been a very hot summer.

I am telling you this here as it shows how important it is to get all the necessary information when you are doing the sketches.

**Cloudberry fruit sketches from berries given to us by a kind** **couple who had found ripe fruit 200m above where we had looked.**

Each year we rented the same cottage in the mountains for a two-week period. I spent the whole time sketching and painting, when we weren’t out hunting for specimens or picking fruit.

By 2018 I had not been lucky enough to find any fruit since starting the project in 2014.

One day we were out picking Bilberries when below me I saw a couple walking along a path with two bulging plastic bags full of something orange. I knew immediately what they were and rushed down to ask the stupid question ‘where did you find these’? I knew full well no-one gives up the location of their ‘mountain gold’ – a name used for Cloudberry fruit. But luckily enough when I explained what I wanted them for, they gave me two berries. The above sketch is those two berries. My husband had never even tasted them at that point, so they became a treat for him!

This will continue 2 April 2023

Foraging plants in the norwegian mountains – 3. History of the project

March 26, 2023March 20, 2023 | Gaynor's Flora

**Rolls of hand-prepared calfskin vellum**.

planning my choice of media

Deciding which plants to study and paint was only one of many decisions I needed to make. I also had to decide what material to paint on and with what!

I chose calfskin vellum.

**I helped to scrape the skins clean of fur.**

In November 2016 I met some friends at William Cowley’s and we were shown round the family business in Newport Pagnell. Cowley’s have produced parchment and vellum there since 1870. It is a smelly business, but they were able to assuage some of our concerns about using a material from animals. Apparently, no animal is killed to obtain the skin – it is a by-product from animals used for our food and milk.

The cattle, goat and sheep skins used for parchment are all obtained from farms where livestock has been reared for wool, milk or meat. No animals are bred to make parchment.
William Cowley website

Cowley’s staff select the best skins available and transform them into beautiful pieces of parchment and vellum.

The transforming process of changing the skin into vellum and parchment used for artwork and legal documents, is hand-done and takes a long time. Cowley’s vellum is ‘worth its weight in gold’. I bought some fairly well matched skins so that I could get seven pieces from them each measuring 25 x 31 cm when mounted; Cowley’s also did the mounting for me.

Vellum is a very special substrate and there are examples that go back hundreds of years. The Magna Carta was written on vellum 800 years ago. Today we have DNA testing and as vellum is skin, this can be a fantastic safeguard.

There are not many limitations as to what can be used on vellum with colour pigments in the form of watercolour paint, ink and gold foil well known. But graphite and waxy pencil can be a hindrance and not normally recommended because of their fatty nature and difficulty with adherence to the vellum. Whatever is used, lies on the surface and is not absorbed into the substrate as with paper. That is why the colours can appear more vibrant.

In botanical art it is customary to use watercolour on vellum, but I also wanted to introduce graphite which I knew could cause some difficulties. This was something else I needed to research.

Luckily, when I was teaching at the American Society of Botanical Artists (ASBA) conference in 2019, I watched two well known artists painting on vellum with watercolour and graphite graphite. I absorbed all the tips that they were able to give, and this helped enormously when adding the graphite sections to my pictures.

Composition contents

**Golden section overlaid *Vaccinium corymbosum* leaves** **artwork**. Note compositional use of ‘third’ lines and placement of main focal point.

Composition is a very difficult subject, and it is something many of my students struggle with. There are loads of ‘rules’, but the best design is by those who know the ‘rules’ and know how to break them; look at Rory McEwen’s work as an example. When saying this, it sounds as though I have overcome the issue of composition – far from it. For every picture I paint, the result is my subjective view. For the person looking at the picture, their subjective view is likely to be slightly different.

However, in modern times there is much research into the placement of the main focal point and some equipment can ‘see’ what the brain notices first when accessing a picture or view. As a baseline, the Golden section is not far out. Therefore, defining the placement of the focal point in a picture is important.

I have spoken to quite a few people about what they would like to see in my series of pictures. I had decided on the measurement of the mounted vellum piece, 31 x 25 cm, therefore I had limited space.

I wanted to paint several elements of the plants, repeated across the series, demonstrating details of the plants not normally appreciated. I hoped that people taking their normal flora for granted would learn about these plants from my finished artwork.

As I was looking at edible fruits my main point of interest was the fruit. But, without overloading the composition I wanted to give information about the flower, its habit and habitat. I still hadn’t decided exactly which plants I would include, but I knew that they would normally live several meters over sea level, preferably in the mountains and probably have some sort of association with each other.

Read on in the next blog due to be published 30 March 2023

Foraging plants in the Norwegian Mountains – 2. History of the project.

March 23, 2023March 23, 2023 | Gaynor's Flora

**Preparing for rain – view from the cottage at Flatvollen near Haglebu.**

As promised, this is the second part to the blog about my series of pictures – Foraging plants in the Norwegian Mountains. It will continue twice weekly until the RHS exhibition mid June 2023.

But what did make me choose this topic to study? It started at the workshop I had in Åsgårdstrand in 2014.

**Cloudberry leaf and remnants of a male flower** – **sketch 2014**

There were students from Norway, the USA and the UK, and I wanted them to get a feel for and learn about some of the plants that mean a lot to Norwegians. Funnily enough, like me, Norwegians take a lot of their fruit for granted and don’t know too much about them. I asked a botanist friend to get some plants when she was at her cottage in the mountains; she arrived with several, including cloudberry (Rubus chamaemorus). This particular year she only found male flowers, but more about this later. At that point I didn’t know they were male flowers; I was just disappointed that none seemed to be fertilised and developing fruit.

As the students were mostly new to botanical art, it was unsurprising that no-one had any real interest in painting the cloudberry plant without the flowers in full bloom.

But all were thrilled by the range of wildflowers available and painted many they found whilst on walks in the neighbourhood. For my part, the cloudberry plant material was enough to kickstart my interest in studying it. Painting the sample available was the start of my obsession for Norwegian edible fruit; it continued until I finished the series of seven pictures in January 2023

Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) botanical exhibition planning

*Magnolia* x *soulangeana* flowers – 2011

Over the years the requirements for exhibiting with the RHS have changed. I had previously done two exhibits for the RHS botanical art shows and had medals from 2011 and 2014. In 2011, 8 pictures were required for each exhibit and in 2014 this was reduced to six although one could have more. When planning for my next exhibit I decided to do seven pictures as odd numbers are aesthetically more pleasing than even numbers.

I will be describing my progress with all seven pictures in my blog, although the exhibit requirements is now only six pictures. I felt Norwegian edible plants would be an ideal topic and had hoped to complete the series over the following three years, but ‘life’ got in the way.

I was responsible for the UK representation during the Botanical Art Worldwide Exhibition in 2018. Scotland had their own exhibit.

My involvement in the worldwide exhibition happened quite suddenly when I realised that the UK would not be represented. I felt this was wrong as we had so many brilliant botanical artists. So I was determined to make it happen; Robin, my husband, suggested that if we got enough people interested, we should call ourselves the Association of British Botanical Artists (ABBA). Luckily, I was able to convince others and ABBA organised several successful events across the country representing UK botanical artists.

During the build -up to the Botanical Art Worldwide exhibition, it became clear that there was a need for an organisation to welcome ‘Anyone, anywhere’ interested in botanical art. Up until then it could be quite expensive to learn about botanical art and membership of existing organisations was based on an individual’s level of expertise. Dr Shirley Sherwood OBE was also of a similar opinion and supported the idea – something that really meant a lot to me and my motivation for continuing my work to establish an organisation.

The Association of Botanical Artists (ABA), now an international organisation, is still going strong.

Eventually, as I got back to planning my next RHS exhibit I recognised that there were some logistic problems. I lived in the UK and hadn’t planned to move back to Norway. Although some of the plants grew in high mountain areas in the UK, there were still some difficulties obtaining what I needed. For example, there were very few female cloudberry plants and therefore only a slim chance of getting material for either the female flowers or fruit. I therefore needed to get to Norway on a regular basis and knew that I could only do this once a year.

I already had another workshop planned in Norway for 2015, so 2016 became the target for starting seriously with preparation sketches

**Botanical art workshop at Åsgårdstrand**

I realised that I wouldn’t be able to decide which part of the plants to focus on until I had done as many sketches as possible at different stages of development.

I would need to make careful notes about colour and size of specimens to aid my decision making.

I will continue this story with a new blog on 26 March 2023.

Foraging plants in the Norwegian Mountains – 1. History of the project.

March 19, 2023March 17, 2023 | Gaynor's Flora

These photos were taken over the years whilst in the throes of this project – Foraging plants in the Norwegian Mountains. Haglebu, the area where the photos were taken, is about 850 metres over sea level in south east Norway and the area where all my plants came from.

I am originally English but have lived many years in Norway with a 24-year gap in the UK from 1996 to 2020. I lived in the valley of Sigdal for several years, just below Haglebu so returning to the area for this project was a joy for me.

Following my application to exhibit at the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Botanical Art and Photography Show this year (2023), I received confirmation that I will be one of the exhibitors and allowed to show six pictures in a series of my own choice.

The topic I chose is the one mentioned above, Foraging plants in the Norwegian Mountains. This series of blogs is about my whole process from choice of plants to painting the final pictures. I intend to post the blogs twice a week right up to the 2023 exhibition in June.

Typically, many Norwegians forage for fruit during the summer and autumn periods of the year. This is understandable when you think that in many parts of Norway the upper metre or more of the ground is frozen solid and covered with snow for up to 6 months of the year. From late May until late September the Norwegian flora has a very fast and compact growth and development. If you come to Norway during the late spring or summer, everything seems very lush with lots of spring flowers everywhere.

If you travel up into the mountains, the flora is different but still very lush – as you see in the pictures above.

Spring seems to start off with the birch (Betula ) and we love to see the ‘mouse ears’ showing in May. The Norwegian national day is 17^th May and being able to decorate everywhere with ‘mouse ears’ really gives the feeling that warmth and growth is at last on the way.

One of the reasons I chose foraging in the mountains as a topic was because I always knew that there were differences in the fruit we found, but it wasn’t until I started painting botanically that I understood how to note these differences and the importance of doing so accurately.

When I first arrived in Norway in the early seventies, I quickly learnt which fruit was good and very roughly the type of area in which I would find it. I then learnt how to use the various fruits for jam, juices and puddings, giving the family a taste of summer over the winter months.

Now I have the freezer full of bilberries, cloudberries, cowberries (or lingonberries), wild cherries as well as the usual fruit from the garden such as red, white and black currents and plums.

When foraging, there were two fruits that were easy to confuse, but I learnt to distinguish between them, although not via botanical knowledge. I have since discovered that both are safe to eat, but not equally pleasant. They have completely different uses which, I will come back to in a future blog when describing them.

Both fruit are red and there is a similarity to the leaves, making it a little complicated when picking them – unless you know what to look for. The one to the right has many uses in jam and juice, whereas the one to the left is a stone fruit of which mostly the leaves are used.

What made me choose these plants to study?

In 2014 whilst still living in the UK, I came to Norway to run and teach at a botanical art workshop in Åsgårdstrand, a popular sailing village near where I now live. Edvard Munch lived in Åsgårdstrand when he painted The Scream.

I will continue this blog on Thursday 23 March.

An update: life and botanical art

January 27, 2022 | Gaynor's Flora

I have been working on four of my six or seven pictures to go to an RHS exhibition in London. This has been a very long-going saga as the process has been interrupted several times since I decided to do it.

**Mountain area – home to the plant series.**

After the last time I took part in the RHS exhibition in 2014 I decided that I was going to do a series of plants called ‘Foraging in the Norwegian Mountains’. Anyone who has read my blog, which more recently has been rather sporadic, will have heard me talk about the series on numerous occasions.

Whilst living on the South coast of England I travelled to Norway for two weeks each year to sketch the plants I had chosen. This was the only time I had them accessible although I had some similar plants in my garden in Bosham. I have to say that they didn’t flourish there – too warm.

But then other things got in the way;

**Invitation to the England part of the Botanical Art Worldwide exhibition**

2016-2018, I started up the Association of British Botanical Artists (ABBA) and managed the England entry to the Worldwide Exhibition in 2018.

2018. As founder and president, changed ABBA to a membership organisation

Support from Dr Shirley Sherwood who became the ABBA Patron

ABBA logo from 2019

ABBA logo 2016-2018

2019. By the middle of this year ABBA was well on its way as a recognised botanical art organisation and Elaine Allison took over managing the ABBA project completely. I thought, at last I would have time to paint. I had done some, but not as much as I would have liked and working on the Norwegian plants project had been limited to two weeks each year.

December 2019, Covid hit us all.

Before – Bosham in May – South coast England

Mid 2020. My daughter, living in Norway, expressed her anxiety for us if anything happened. What she actually said was that we were too old to live in England by ourselves and that it was about time we moved back to Norway. Robin, who had never lived in Norway, promised to learn the language and his son (who had just moved back to England) gave his blessing. The rest of 2020 became filled with house selling, packing, moving, home searching and buying – my daughter even coped with us living with her!!

Robin started to learn the language, but all the legal stuff in relation to officialdom and applying for residency in an EEC country, plus details in relation to house buying, fell to me. I managed to paint the Fly agaric – Amanita muscaria and a couple of sketches in my perpetual diary (painting cup half-full), plus continued to advise and mark assignments for my Botanical art online course students.

Long shadows at midday, a month after the sun turned.

January 2021 – we moved into our new home with a view of the Oslo fjord in the distance. The year was used to make the house into our home, although we had a lot to learn about what works here and what doesn’t. The garden is mostly rock, so planting is very much an ongoing trial as we battle with little earth and a temperatures that vary between -20˚C to +35˚C (warming climate). Botanical art is not as well thought of as in the UK, but once the lock-downs are over I already have quite a list of people wanting to do a botanical art workshop.

Icy walking is only safe with studs – but the kitten doesn’t care as long as there are laces!

Now I have to plan my botanical art work a little differently living in Norway. We have had snow since November last year but it hasn’t been quite as cold as last winter, although that can change. With recent thaws during the day and minus degrees at night, the snow turns to thick ice. This means I don’t have access to my plants during the winter so I had to change my working process.

‘Foraging in the Norwegian Mountains’ botanical art series on vellum.

NB; I won’t be showing you the finished compositions until they are shown at the RHS exhibition – probably 2023, but will show parts of them.

After all these time delays for the series, all I had was sketches and colour samples in my sketch book, plus some small studies on the vellum I would be using. I had heard the phrase ‘productive procrastination’ and thought I now knew what it meant!

Cloudberry – Multe- *Rubus chamaemorus* sample on vellum

Sketchbook drawing Crowberry – Krekling – *Empetrum nigrum*

I had worked out the composition of all of my pictures and how they would be hung as a group at the exhibition. Each picture will be on mounted vellum and shows the plants both enlarged in colour and actual size in graphite. Last summer I painted the colour part of four pictures so that I would have the actual plants and could match colour at the same time. I planned to do the graphite on those four paintings during this winter and so far have completed three of them – except for scale bars.

Graphite on vellum is not easy and depends upon the vellum, which, as a living material can change from one part to another. In some areas I have been able to use pencils, but in others a brush. My last two paintings have very tiny leaves and the last one, Empetrum nigrum which I will show part of here, has been a bit of headache!

With Empetrum nigrum the leaves actual size are about 2mm long and the unripe fruit is about 4mm. I have had to vary the hardness of the pencil used so that I get clean lines, rather than gritty ones. It doesn’t seem to matter if I use my most expensive pencils or not as it is the surface of the vellum that decides. Sometimes I use the pencil first, if too pale I paint a layer of water-soluble graphite on top, then finish off with another layer of pencil, finally lifting off loose graphite and ’fixing’ it with water. It certainly is not as straight forward as using graphite on paper.

This winter, only one more vellum picture to finish off with the graphite drawing. Spring is on its way, although the sun is still low on the horizon; plants will wake up after their winter rest; trips into the mountains to look forward to and planning for the colour part of the final three pictures.

When I wasn’t walking in Norway …

July 31, 2019July 31, 2019 | Gaynor's Flora

…..I was either hunting for plants or painting.

I had a list of plant detail that I had worked out I needed to complete the composition planning for my series of pictures. My vellum size for each piece is 25 x 31 cm – which I suppose relatively speaking is quite small. But all but one of my plants is very small with leaves varying from 2-6mm long on the Vaccinium microcarpum, to the Rubus chamaemorus where the leaves vary hugely in size.

Vaccinium microcarpum – Small Cranberry – Leaves 2-6mm long.

Impetrum niger ssp. Hermaphroditum – Crowberry – Leaves 3-6 mm long

Rubus chaaemorus – Cloudberry (image is 13cm high)

I decided that rather than work on all seven pictures at once as I have done so far, I would work on half this year and the rest next year. For all of them I needed to do some colour matching on vellum as this will be different to the colours I have used on paper. You have already seen the small piece I did on the Cranberry a couple of blogs ago. You may also have noticed the difference to the actual flower size (tiny) and the painting which I did at twice the size.

Luckily enough although there is a slight difference in the terrain from which each of the plants come from, we have found each species within walking distance of the cottage in which we have been staying. The Cloudberry and the Cranberry can be found intertwined with each other in the soggy sphagnum moss – but not always. The Bog Blueberry (Vaccinium uliginosum) comes from a similar area, but I have seen it reaching up the side of rugged outcrops. The Crowberry can be found all over the mountains although the Ssp Hermaphroditum can only be found at higher altitudes. The Bilberry can also be found pretty well most places, but doesn’t seem to be above the tree-line and doesn’t seem to like really boggy areas. The Cowberry – Lignonberry (Vaccinium vitas-idaea) is spread on ant mounds and rocky outcrops. Common Bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) likes much drier conditions and is often found in pine woods. But we did find an example not far from the cottage. Last year Robin drove about 150km to find a spot that I knew about!

Below is the colour sample of the Bog blueberry done this year. The very new new leaves start out quite red and as they get older they become bluer and stiffer. Sorry the photo is a little dark.

*Vaccinium uliginosum* – Bog blueberry – Watercolour on vellum 5×7″, painted twice natural size.

How the weather and the plants change in the mountains.

July 26, 2019July 22, 2019 | Gaynor's Flora

**The other side of the valley looking down to the cottage**

Robin, ant directing!

You might not be able to make out too much detail in this picture, but we were on the other side of the valley from the cottage in which we stayed. To get there we went down to 806 metres and the highest part was 1104 metres. We only walked about 10 km – in 5hours and finished it off with a waffle and sour cream. Delicious!

This time the day was fantastic. The wind had dropped and it was actually warm-ish – about 16º C. In some areas we even took off our fleeces.

On our journey we found female Cloudberries, Pedicularis sceptrum – Moor King, ants struggling down a little river (so we provided some with a life raft and others with a bridge).

Usnea Lichen

We also found a birch wood with a lot of fresh Usnea lichen hanging off the trees.

Birch skog.

I have always found that the colours in Norway at this time of year really sparkle. The green of the grass seems so new and the blue of the sky is also amazing. Of course you can see for miles and miles.

Waiting

We still had a way to go and my poor daughter stretching ahead, sometimes had to wait for us old fogeys. I think she is almost at the highest point of our walk at this stage, just about to trek downhill.

Trailing azalea – Loiseleuria procumbens

Unripe Cloudberry – Rubous chamaemorus

We continued to see some amazing flora including the Trailing azalea and large patches of female cloudberries.

Seeing so much cloudberries meant of course that we were walking through areas of quite boggy ground. But I can’t tell you exactly where, because for a Norwegian, the site of ripe Cloudberries is a trade secret and never divulged to anyone!

When you see the final pictures of Norwegian mountain foraging plants in a couple of years time, you will know what lengths have been gone to to get subject matter!

Summer snow in the Norwegian mountains

July 3, 2019 | Gaynor's Flora

Whilst everyone else is suffering extremely high temperatures in Europe, we are experiencing +4 high in the mountains of southern Norway! I believe it is warmer at the North Cape.

However, as there is now no longer a direct ferry from the UK to Norway, we drive here over several days, with our cargo of painting equipment. A necessity for the job I am going to do whilst here.

On the way we stopped off in Amsterdam to visit my son and partner and had a cycle ride to the coast in 37 degrees. It was almost a relief to eventually get to a cooler climate, although the day we arrived it was in the high twenties lower down in the valley.

Since then, the temperature has gradually sunk even lower. Today we are awaiting my daughter who lives on the Norwegian coast, advising her to bring winter woollies. I didn’t dare tell her that it has been snowing today – although it hasn’t settled.

So why am I subjecting my sun loving and warmth seeking husband to todays chill in the Norwegian mountains? It’s the plants of course. I am now back to getting all the plant information to paint my pictures for my next RHS exhibit. I know I have spoken about this for a couple of years or so, but my involvement in the Worldwide Botanical art exhibition last year and continuance with setting up the Association of British Botanical Artists (ABBA), rather delayed things.

Because of the delay, I also lost my right to exhibit at the RHS – this year being five years since I last exhibited. I therefore had to apply again. Luckily, my work in general was again accepted as potentially worthy of a medal place, so now I am going to work through my subjects properly and, rather than rushing it, plan to exhibit in 2021.

*Små Tranebær is Small Cranberry in Norwegian. The practice piece is twice natural size (the actual flower top right) is on vellum – as the final work will be.*

This year I am focusing on three of the plants I have chosen and plan to get information I feel is lacking to complete a picture. My first is Vaccinium microcarpum – or Small cranberry. Last year I was able to find ripe fruit and was able to get all the information from that. Previously I had only drawn one flower, so I am concentrating on these now.

I thought you might be interested in my already messy workplace setup at 910 metres over sea level!

If Denise Walser-Kolar sees this blog, I hope she will notice I have taken on board her teaching. As long as I practice what she taught in Vienna, painting on vellum is going much better – even with the tiny leaves! Thank you Denise.

The other two plants I hope to get some more information on is the Vaccinium uliginosum (Bog Blueberry) and a little from the Rubus chamaemorus (Cloudberry). In both instances, it is only small details I need. I have already noticed that the leaf colour of the Bog blueberry seems to change in the sun. New leaves have a red tinge to the edge of the leaves, older leaves don’t, but in the sun they become red to almost a Perylene Violet (for watercolour artists) colour. I didn’t realise that before.

The Cloudberry fruit is only to be found on female plants. Each plant can be quite huge and spread many metres. Around the cottage I have only seen the male flowers of the Cloudberry – no female ones at all. it might be because it hasn’t warmed up very much yet where we are. The temperatures are set to improve, but I doubt we will be here long enough to benefit from it.

Please don’t get the wrong impression of Norway. The summers can be hot and the winters cold. It is a fantastically beautiful country and every area has its own attraction. I like it in the area we are staying as I lived in the valley for several years. Lastly, a picture of the sun rise a couple of days ago. It doesn’t get totally black at night at this time of year, but this was taken at 03:30.

A website that works and some amazing students!

April 23, 2014April 4, 2015 | Gaynor's Flora

I absolutely love what I do. I can’t believe that I am doing what I have always wanted to do.

After several days work and a terrible broadband reception after 15:00 each day during Easter, my website: gaynorsflora.com now works properly. Thank goodness. I suppose that because the people who sold the ‘take-away-site’ to me, made such a mistake and cut me off, they probably did me a favour. I went through everything on the website and hopefully now everything functions as it should.

So, I am still catching up. I have had a class today, sorted out some paperwork, wrote feedback for an assignment for London Art College where I am the botanical art tutor and took some new assignments off the website in preparation for marking at the weekend. It is these assignments that I am so exhilarated about. The one I did today was really good and with a short glimpse of the new ones, I can’t believe my luck. They too are very good. People who are so interested in botanical art, are learning so much and who I am sure you will know about before too long. Obviously I can’t mention names but I wish I could. One day…..

Tomorrow I am going to put aside all paperwork and paint for the first time in a while. At least I will during the afternoon and evening while my husband is at his art class.

My face is healing. The blue-black colour that it has been from eye to under my chin is now a mauvish-grey with a little jaundiced yellow in between. The high cheekbone is still a solid lump, but I am sure that will reduce eventually. My pulled muscles and tendons prevents strenuous exercise just yet, but then I can paint. Tomorrow is the day! I will show you some of it at the end of the day – I hope.

But, I still have some pictures that I got permission to put on this blog. This time its Sharon Tingey. She was on the other side of the stand to me at the RHS. Sharon’s work was Helianthus – Sunflowers and it won a Gold. It was really beautiful work and she had actively used her knowledge of the Fibonacci sequence to paint it.

By the way, I had a student today with whom I was discussing the spiral and she referred to it as the ‘Liberace spiral’! Luckily she really understood the funny side of this and has allowed me to mention it.

Do enjoy Sharon’s work and let her know that you have done so.