Holding a looking glass to nature (From Gazette & Herald)

Holding a looking glass to nature

THINK artist in Ryedale and you probably think landscapes. Vast swathes of pastoral beauty, rolling fields, wild moorland and undulating dales.

There is an award-winning artist, however, based in Malton, who specialises in the minutiae of nature in her painting.

Amanda Willoughby is a fully-fledged botanical artist.

Taking plants under the microscope, dissecting them, sketching and re-sketching, she records all kinds of flora and fauna in scientific detail.

"It is an old-fashioned skill," said Amanda. "But I think it's important to keep these old skills alive as technology advances."

Coming from a trained information designer, this may sound a little odd. However, Amanda never really took to technical design and one gets the feeling she always craved a specific subject, one she has finally found.

"As a designer, I was working with information and themes that didn't really interest me," she explains.

"Then I got some work with the National Trust in the Peak District and I think that was what steered me towards botanical art."

She trained at what was then, seven years ago, a pioneering course at the University of Sheffield, where she was taught botany, specific drawing skills and the history of botanical art.

She was the only student to receive a gold medal from the Royal Horticultural Society and, since graduating five years ago, has managed to carve out a very specialised freelance career.

After graduating, she moved to Ryedale with her husband, Nigel Cavanagh, an archaeologist with MAP archaeological consultants.

"I'm not making as much money as I was as a designer but I really enjoy what I do and I'm hoping to build on it," she explains. "It does seem like things are gathering momentum."

Last month, Amanda was awarded the Certificate of Botanical Merit, one of six awards presented at the Society of Botanical Artists' annual exhibition at the Westminster Gallery.

Last August, she was presented with the Lyra Award, one of the top five awards at the UK Coloured Pencil Society Exhibition, for botanical studies of the complex surface textures of different types of fleshy fruit.

While living and working in Malton, she has taken part in several local art shows, including the annual Ryedale Open, as well as contributing to larger national exhibitions.

"The starting point was getting into the very prestigious London exhibitions," she said.

Private commissions have come from these exhibitions and she has also just launched her own website to sell her original paintings and prints.

She has also illustrated a book, Wild Flowers of the Lake District, and says the next step is to get more established in illustration and possibly greetings cards.

So what is her 'style' as a botanical artist? "I'm not the type to paint a pretty picture of something," she says firmly. "Roses are beautiful, if you paint a picture of a rose it is going to be beautiful. I'm into flowers that don't look much at first.

"I like weeds. Take a ribwart plantain, you focus on some unnoticed detail and point out the bits that are worth a second look. Most of nature is beautiful if you give it second glance."

In terms of technique, she is also a bit if a renegade, flouting tradition to some degree.

"Traditionally, botanical artists use pencil or very fine water colour work on water colour paper or vellum. "I use a lot of pencil crayons and I'm a bit unusual in the way that I use water colour," she explains.

"I am an artist first, but obviously I care about getting things right scientifically," she says. "I go and examine something, come home, look it up, check it once again under the microscope, and, of course, you learn a lot about a plant by sketching and re-sketching it."

She is particularly proud of her latest accolade because the Certificate of Botanical Merit is judged each year by an expert in the botanical field. "It proved to me that I was getting the botanical side of things right, which was great."

So why has botanical drawing survived in the age of photography? "Well, they said painting wouldn't survive photography didn't they?" she reflects. "I think there is always that argument that you can put your own response and feeling into a painting."

But does this hold in such a scientific field? "Well, I suppose the thing photography can't do is the dissection element, which drawing can get to, and also the sheer microscopic detail."

She concedes that probably 60 to 70pc of botanical and plant identification books do favour photography, but at the same time botanical drawing is thriving, with two more training courses in the UK and interest from horticultural and artistic groups far from waning.

Two years ago, she worked on a project at Ryedale Folk Museum where they were conserving endangered cornfield plants.

The museum had a cornfield in which plants grew that had rarely been seen after the Second World War due to an intensification in farming methods and the use of weed killers, including types of cornflower and corn marigold.

Amanda made pictorial records of all of the endangered plants as part of the project, and then used the material to form part of an exhibition in the Royal Horticultural Society's annual show.

"It was a good way to raise awareness down in London about the important work going on at the museum," she explains. That exhibition won her a second gold medal.

She is now embarking on a similar project to record the endangered grassland flora of the limestone tabular hills above Pickering and Helmsley.

I suggest her next step should be to compile a book on the endangered wildflowers of Ryedale, since she already has two relevant projects under her belt.

She doesn't reject the idea and I am inclined to say watch this space....

For more information on Amanda's work, visit her website, amandawilloughby.mysite.freeserve.com.

Updated: 12:04 Wednesday, May 12, 2004