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Valerie Baines FLS FSBA
Biography
Fellow of the Linnean Society of London.
Founder member and past Vice President of the Society of Botanical Artists.
Valerie Baines has drawn and painted as long as she can remember and has always had an interest in the wild-life around her. As a schoolchild she reared butterflies and kept various pets, who were models for drawings and paintings. She now lives in Sussex and finds much inspiration in the countryside and wild flowers in the area.
She went to Harrow Art School, and the Royal College of Music, and then became a designer in the studio at Sandersons, where an aptitude for design and flower painting is essential. On leaving Sandersons she continued freelance designing and illustration.
Valerie’s paintings have been exhibited at the Royal Academy 1982-84, the Royal Society of Miniature Painters, the Royal Horticultural Society (gaining several Silver-gilt medals), the Linnean Society of London, the Museum of Garden History, the Medici Galleries, Llewellyn Alexander Gallery, and annually with the Society of Botanical Artists (since 1984) among other venues in England; and also at the 7th International Exhibition of Botanical Art, the Hunt Institute of Botanical Painting, Carnegie Mellon University, USA, regularly at the Botanical Gardens of the Memorial University, Newfoundland, Canada, and a solo exhibition at Le Jardin des Cinq Sens, Yvoire, France.
She has illustrated over ten books concerned with Natural History, including: The Naturalist’s Garden and The Story of Silk by John Feltwell; Glorious Butterflies (showing all the British butterflies on their larval food-plants,) for Butterfly Conservation and Mindful of Butterflies by Bernard Jackson, – butterflies becoming something of a speciality. Her work is reproduced in The Art of Botanical Painting 2004, and The Botanical Palette 2007. She has also written articles for The Artist on drawing and painting in watercolour, and tutors courses on flower painting at Pashley Manor, Ticehurst, Sussex, and Juniper Hall Field Centre, Dorking, Surrey, where there is the butterfly garden full of nectar and larval food plants that she has designed for the Surrey and S.W. London branch of Butterfly Conservation.
Among many commissions and paintings in collections world-wide are oil and water-colour paintings of flowers, gardens, houses, interiors, cats, butterflies, and fourteen gorilla portraits for John Aspinall (some on permanent show at Port Lympne, Kent).
Her most recent solo exhibition was at the Ashdown Forest Centre, Wych Cross, Forest Row, Sussex, 2007, with 37 water-colour and oil paintings of the plants, birds, butterflies, animals, trees, botanical flower studies, habitats, and landscapes in the forest to be seen throughout the year. There are also books and prints illustrated by Valerie available on her website.
Contact Details
Web: http://www.valeriebaines.com
Email: vb[at]valeriebaines.com