Botanical Artist and Illustrator

Marianne Hazlewood

Welcome to my site, enjoy a browse through my botanical art and illustrations. I update regularly with news, exhibitions and you can shop with me as well, please get in touch if you have any questions. All content is written by me, using natural intelligence (-_-)

Contemporary Botanical Illustration

Greening the Grey…

I love to bring the lush greens of the plant world onto walls and into homes, I feel it is so important to recognise the importance of plants to this planet’s wellbeing and also for our own mental health. I love the combination of fine art and applied arts that the arts and crafts niche offers.

It’s always fantastic when you can inspire viewers to look at plants beyond the background dressing to their lives. As a botanical artist, I am drawn to highlighting the morphology, detail and patina that the casual visitor might miss. I often place my exotic specimens in an abstract space, working in watercolour, or pen and ink, in monotone & duotone, to highlight their structure and presence. I want to spark curiosity about what I have presented, and encourage those interested, to experience and regard plants as essential life forms.

I love to show the fantastic natural design and care system that has been built into a plant’s structure and development. I often position my inflorescences as characters that my viewers can engage with; there can be an element of anthropomorphising, allowing people to make an empathetic connection. The highest compliment is when someone gets in touch to tell me that they have planted and grown the subject of my work – often the Arisaema genus, my weird and wonderful muses.

Green, and colour very definitely fuel me, if I don’t get enough of it I can feel starved, however I am also, and will always be, in love with monotone and the structure that comes through when you are looking through a restricted pallet. So I do both, I work in colour and with monotone techniques. Usually for very different purposes, but always to show some element of a specimen that I find fascinating!

I currently exhibit with the Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh and Mor Studio, in Nunnington, North Yorkshire. I also show with the VAS and SSA Opens, at various botanical art societies and I am a graduate of the Diploma in Botanical Illustration from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, I have an RHS gold medal, a BISCOT gold medal and my work is in the Hunt Institute of Botanical Documentation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

I am interested in connecting and working with botanists, horticulturalists, environmental scientists, botanical artists and illustrators and other artists, and in taking on commission work. I am also looking forward to the new projects on my ever growing to do list; some more ink work, watercolour and recently I have been delving into printmaking.

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