This week’s blog is written by Liz Prendergast, with photographs by Shevaun Doherty.

Now that the first Bloom Exhibition of Botanical Art has been dismantled and much of it is on its way to Claregalway, I will give you all a quick–and very personal–impression of the occasion from the perspective of one who was fortunate to be asked to contribute.

The lead-up to the Bloom exhibition was a call to artists to submit paintings for inclusion. Rebecca Dunwoody was the initial exhibition co-ordinator. The judges were:

• Brendan Sayers of the National Botanic Gardens
• Belinda Northcote, a botanical artist who had an exhibition stand in the Crafts Council area of Bloom
• Patricia Butler, historian of botanical art in Ireland.

The judges were looking for artistic merit and also botanical accuracy: with this in mind, those who did not make it this year are encouraged to try again next year.

For the exhibition itself, the paintings were wonderfully arranged by Lynn Stringer, Holly Somerville and Yanny Petters. The space was limited in size and yet they created a very effective and pleasing display of beautiful work.

Yanny gets to work

To the right a bit, Holly

An invitation from Bord Bia to attend the Botanical Art in Bloom Exhibition was sent to everyone and the launch was held on the afternoon of Sunday 26 May. It was a lovely gathering of artists, their families and friends, as well as representatives of Bord Bia, who have been very supportive throughout the whole venture. The exhibition was held in a room in the OPW Visitor Centre in the Phoenix Park: this popular meeting place is just beside a lovely lunch venue and would attract much interest through the whole period. The exhibition continued until 10 June.

Opening day: admiring the art

Having a good look!

Bloom itself could be summed up, for me, as starting with a slightly shaky sensation of tripping over crowded plastic and aluminium pathways, hot stuffy tents and sensory overload, all combined with a permanent feeling of not quite knowing where you were on that strange little map of the tent village.  That was after you had queued to get into the car park, to get food and coffee and of course those queues for the porta-loos! That’s what happens when 80,000 people come to an enormous temporary show in a field in a park for a weekend.

By contrast, the Bloom Botanical art exhibition was a cool sanctuary housed within solid stone walls. The outstanding feature for me was the amazing range of gifted Irish botanical artists with such different styles and yet all accurately capturing the character of their chosen plant or flower. People were delighted to step into this relaxed calm space and chat and maybe purchase some cards or prints. The sale of paintings, despite the overwhelming interest, was not marvellous.

Some of the artwork on display

Post mortem – Next year we will have to put much larger signage up around the show because I think many people did not know we were there. The opening of the exhibition is normally a very good opportunity to do some serious selling and this may be better on a weekday evening (say,Thursday) where serious collectors expect to be invited and maybe should be. With that said, it was a very impressive beginning for the ISBA exhibition calendar and a credit to everyone involved in its organisation. The responses in the guest book were very positive and many people were interested in going to workshops and classes. The many people I talked to were all very interested and enthusiastic about the formation, at last, of a botanical artists’ society in Ireland.