The Tapestry of Life: A Botanical Artist’s Miscellany (Botanical Art Portfolios series)
Susan Christopher-Coulson
About the author: An award-winning botanical artist and tutor, Susan trained at Kingston School of Art as a fashion designer and worked for several years in London as a designer and illustrator, before her interest in the natural world led her to take up botanical art. She has been awarded two Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) gold medals, as well as awards from The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, the Society of Botanical Artists, and The Society of Floral Painters. She is an elected fellow of the Society of Botanical Artists, where she was vice president for eight years, and a member of The Florilegium Society at Sheffield Botanical Gardens. Her original artworks are in private collections in the UK and abroad, as well as in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art collection at Kew Gardens, the RHS Lindley Library and the archive of The Florilegium Society at Sheffield Botanical Gardens. An experienced teacher, Susan was the coloured pencil tutor for several years when the Society of Botanical Artists established their distance learning diploma course.
Published by Two Rivers Press on 21st May 2024
Paperback 96pp 978-1-915048-03-5 200 x 200 cm £17.99
Press release for The Tapestry of Life [pdf]
Contact Anne Nolan for more information, to request a review copy, or an interview with the author: anne@tworiverspress.com.
The link to buy the book is here
A pdf version of the book (with low resolution images) is available for download here
- This retrospective ‘exhibition in book form’ draws together the threads that have formed the warp and weft of the artist’s profession: the natural world and her love of drawing woven together with skills in design and making.
- An intensely personal but relatable story where the artist shares her compulsion to collect and then record the treasures she finds as well as her sources of historical inspiration – from medieval prayer books to seventeenth-century Florists.
- An inspirational guide to working with coloured pencils on board or watercolour paper, where readers can’t help but be infected with the artist’s enthusiasm for joyful juxtapositions of colour and form.
- A step-by-step tutorial to painting a broken English Florists’ tulip provides all the details readers will need to try the medium for themselves, showing how layers of colour are gently built and combined to form glowing representations of these gorgeous flowers.
- More than 80 full colour illustrations.
Sample page spreads:
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Botanical Art Portfolios is a series featuring distinguished botanical artists, their work and their inspiration. Intentionally both beautiful and useful, these handy-sized paperbacks are designed to be taken anywhere, referred to, collected, and gazed at. Each book brings out the personality of its individual artist, showcases their work and shares why they love what they do, explaining their choice of subjects and the distinct techniques they have developed. The Series Editor is Julia Trickey, author of Botanical Artistry and award-winning botanical artist.