W&N materials used
Artists’ Acrylic,
Artists’ Water Colour, range of graphite pencils.
About Coral Guest
Coral Guest is one of the worlds most celebrated botanical artists and is renowned for her life-size watercolours of flowers and fruit. Her work is described by the art critic Richard Cork as having a 'life of its own' and 'the wow factor'.
Coral's career began in the 1980's, when she began working on a series of traditional botanical watercolour paintings, with the intent to bring this into the realm of contemporary art. By developing the art of painting plants in a life-size format, and through the specific development of negative space in botanical composition, her work has since influenced a new generation of botanical art.
She studied Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art, receiving both the Drawing Scholarship and the Travel Scholarship. Her understanding of composition became finely tuned whilst training in the art of calligraphy as a young artist in Japan. She has been awarded 2 Gold Medals by the Royal Horticultural Society.
Coral Guest's Work
Coral's work stands out as natural beauty in natural light. She works in her studio with shadow-less daylight from the north. She uses Winsor & Newton Artists' Watercolour; Artists' Acrylic; and pencil for her pieces.
"I use Winsor & Newton Water Colour and Acrylics because the paint is consistently excellent and has never let me down. Paintings in public and private collections that were completed many years ago remain in a perfect and pristine condition, with the colour still bright and pure."
Her work is widely represented in national collections including that of the Shirley Sherwood Collection of Contemporary Botanical Art at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew; the Hunt Botanical Institute; and the Royal Horticultural Society.
It has always been Coral's intention to capture the very essence of plants at their optimum level of life. Working with this kind of transient life form demands calmness and an ability to focus. Previous generations of flower painters had only small pieces of paper to work with, which required them to place images of dissected parts of plant side by side, across the small piece of paper. Her larger paintings of Iris and Lily were painted on newly developed large pieces of cotton rag paper, this has enabled Coral to break new ground and create life-size paintings of plants that are as much as 5ft tall, depicting the stem; leaves; and bulb; in situ. This produces dramatic work, which she plans to develop further.
In the UK her work has been exhibited at:
The Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
The Ashmolean Museum Oxford
Royal Albert Museum Exeter
Tryon Gallery London
In the USA:
The Smithsonian Institute Washington Denver Botanic Garden Museum
Coral was Flower Painting Tutor at Kew from 1990 - 2002, before embarking on a tour of Master Classes in Europe and the USA. In 2001 her first book 'Painting Flowers in Watercolour - a Naturalistic Approach' was published by A&C Black. It describes her unique working methods and uses Winsor and Newton Artists' Watercolour paint and brushes.
Coral Guest uses Winsor & Newton because
The paint is consistently excellent and has never let me down. Paintings in public and private collections that were completed many years ago remain in a perfect and pristine condition, with the colour still bright and pure.
For further information on Coral Guest visit:
www.coralguest.com
http://www.coralguest.blogspot.com/