Judging our upcoming competition, ‘Plant Life: Botanical Illustration’ is the President of the Society of Botanical Artists, Sandra Wall Armitage! An incredibly well-known botanical artist, Sandra’s career has spanned many mediums due to her skills with textiles and painting.
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Sandra Wall Armitage SBA is a highly experienced Botanical Artist and Surface Pattern Designer. Her designs have been produced internationally on a wide range of products and her vibrant paintings are held in private collections in Europe, Australia and the USA. In 2013 she was elected the President of The Society of Botanical Artists, a society that remains a leader in its field of botanical art enjoying a well deserved world wide reputation. Sandra also continues as Director of Botanical Enterprises Ltd, the retail arm of the Society established in 2005. In this role she liaises with clients, researches products and for the past five seasons has mentored selected SBA diploma graduates working on the designs for the covers of the catalogues for de Jager bulbs.
She was awarded a Certificate of Botanical Merit for her painting ‘Hellebore Collection’. Complex flower groups are a special theme of her paintings and in 2006 her painting ‘A Prickly Bunch’ received the People’s Choice award and the Daler Rowney best painting award at the SBA Annual Exhibition at the Westminster Gallery, London.
Sandra’s watercolour portrait of a Pansy
Sandra has had a long association with and experience of designing for the greeting card industry. She has worked for many of the major card companies in the UK in particular Hallmark and Ling publishing. In the 90’s Sandra produced a top selling range of gift wrap for Henry Ling and Son, later to become Ling Publishing. The popularity of this high quality wrap was in large part due to the beautifully drawn floral designs and the intricacy of their repeating patterns which are her speciality. In 1994 she was engaged to work exclusively for Hallmark as a floral artist for their high quality card ranges. These experiences led her to launch www.watercolourflowers.co.uk to produce her own select range of cards and prints. In addition to flower paintings and studies in watercolour, Sandra’s skill as an artist and designer extends to working with a range of subjects and other media. More recently Sandra has collaborated with Cadmium Design Consultants Ltd, and has produced a scaled up version Of Cosmos and Michaelmas daisies which has been digitally manipulated and printed onto large glass panels around a quality restaurant in the West End of London. The combination of her textile skills and her detailed flower studies have resulted in her designs being produced on a wide range of products, including Furnishing and dress fabrics; Home and kitchen wares; Enamel boxes; Greeting cards; Gift wrap; Magazine and book illustration.
Teaching has gone hand in hand with Sandra’s career as an artist and illustrator. She is passionate about her subject and has spent many satisfying years as a part time lecturer passing on her skills to textile students on BA Degree courses. Many of her past students now hold prestigious positions in the textile market. Her reputation as a teacher has led to her running master classes for design studios in the UK and in Sydney, Australia. Sandra now teaches from home where she runs regular courses from her studio in Bedfordshire.
Sandra has recently been organising The Society of Botanical Artists Annual Exhibition in London taking place 13th – 21st October 2017.
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