This is an except from my talk I gave at the opening of the Botanical Illustration show.

This is the first time I have ever organized a group exhibition in SL so I really appreciate all the support I have received from everyone in Melioria, especially Candace Ducatillon (my partner in exhibiting), Serenek Timeless, who has helped me with all things promotional, technical and decorative, and Professore Aldo Stern who continues to kindly support all my initiatives on this lovely Mediterranean island.

The reproductions of botanical illustrations that are on display provide you with a very tiny sampling of the work that was produced in Europe in the 15th, 18th and 21st centuries. There are descriptive texts in the form of a note card embedded into each art work. Just click on each and you will get the biography of the artists who produced them.

Botanical illustration has a long tradition in both the arts and sciences and is currently enjoying a resurgence in popularity with artists and collectors. The earliest botanical illustrations date back thousands of years. One of the earliest practical uses of botanical illustration was for identifying plants with medicinal properties. Drawings were gathered in books called herbals and used by physicians in plant-based medicine.

Botanical drawings were also important in the age of discovery. European explorers returned from their voyages to far corners of the world with thousands of plant and seed samples. European landowners were then able to cultivate a wide new range of plants for their gardens, and some commissioned botanical artists to help catalogue, document and publish their burgeoning collections.

For the past two hundred years, the centre of plant science, conservation and botanical illustration has been the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, near London, England. Since their early eighteenth century origins, Kews gardens have spread to 300 acres and their living collection of plants is the largest in the world, with representatives of about one in eight plant species.

In North America, the hub for botanical illustrators is the Hunt Institute, part of the Carnegie Melon University in Pittsburgh, PA. The Hunts collection includes over 30,000 botanical illustrations, and it always has an interesting exhibition open to the public .

Nowadays, some botanical gardens around the world employ illustrators, but magazines tend to use photographs. Painters like me who are interested in botanical illustration are likely to be working on their own for pleasure. They may use a wider range of materials than their predecessors colour pencil and sumi ink have been added to the traditions of watercolour and pen and ink but the hallmarks of their work continue to be accuracy in form and colour and attention to detail.

I must draw your attention to Candaces beautiful photographs of plants growing here in Melioria, they expand upon and beautifully complement the illustrations .

Principato di Melioria, Villa Vesuviana, Westphalia (69, 183, 2801)