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In their bicentennial year, the Foundation and Friends of the Botanic Gardens hosts the Margaret Flockton Award for Excellence in Scientific Botanical Illustration. The first botanical illustrator at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, Margaret Flockton, made a significant contribution to Australian scientific botanical illustration. She is particularly noted for her illustrating of botanist Joseph Henry Maiden’s “The Forest Flora of New South Wales”, “A Critical Revision of the Genus Eucalyptus”, and the genus Opunta. These works beared witness to Margaret’s unsurpassed talent as a scientific illustrator and as Australia’s first female lithographer.
The Margaret Flockton Award is unique amongst international art awards, focusing exclusively on contemporary scientific botanical illustration, as distinct from botanical art.
Illustrators from around the world submitted scientifically accurate drawings that accompanied the published taxonomic description of the plant, clearly highlighting all of the distinctive features of the species. Original taxonomic illustrations are highly detailed black and white drawings primarily undertaken in pen and ink, more rarely in pencil.
The winners of this year’s Award are:
First prize – $5,000
Pellaea falcata P. nana by Pauline Dewar (Australian)
Second prize – $2,000
Mucuna japira by Gustavo Marigo (United Kingdom)
Highly Commended
Cissus erecta by Hye Woo Shin (South Korea)
Highly Commended
Aeonium balsamiferum by Juan Luis Castillo (Spain)
Highly Commended
Cyathea delgadii by Susana Ferreira de Souza (Brazil)
Works were judged on the following criteria: Accurate interpretation and portrayal of the plant characters and diagnostic features highlighted in the botanical description; technical merit; artistic merit; composition; and reproducibility.
The judges for the 2016 Award were: Lesley Elkan, Botanical Illustrator and Margaret Flockton Award Curator, Royal Botanic Garden Sydney; Dr Trevor Wilson, Botanist, Royal Botanic Garden Sydney; and Anne Ryan, Curator Australian Art, Art Gallery of NSW.
