Botanical and natural history artist

Born London 1964

Living and working in Hertfordshire

Profile and practice

Gael has worked part and full time as a botanical and natural history artist for over fourteen years.  She has participated successfully in solo and group exhibitions selling over 30 paintings across three exhibitions and securing many commissions. 

Following an early career in the NHS in human resources, she trained in fashion skills and pattern cutting, creating wedding dresses and evening wear, relishing the textures and colours of beautiful natural fibres.  Continuing to paint and draw she also worked in senior management roles in the NHS and voluntary sector, and for six years ran a successful consultancy business, before becoming a full time natural history artist and teacher.  From 2000 to 2006 she was also a company director and chair of the board for a large voluntary sector organisation in Hertfordshire.  Having been approached by several greetings card companies and a publisher she decided to turn to painting as her occupation and profession.

Whilst working full time she achieved certificates of higher education from Birmingham University in Botanical Illustration and Cambridge University in Combined Fine Arts.  As part of her studies and professional development she has written and published a number of articles, the most important of which was 'painting nature on vellum' in 2004. 

Having gained a professional qualification in teaching adults in the early 1990s she is well equipped to organise and run classes and workshops which she has been doing for the last three years.  There is a series of 10 week classes as well as one and two day workshops.  From 2008 she will be teaching at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden.

In 2006 she gained a Post-Graduate Certificate in Business and Digital Skills for Artists and Makers from the University of Hertfordshire and now devotes all her attention to botanical and natural history painting, whether teaching or painting for exhibition and to commission from her own studio in North Hertfordshire.

Her work details found natural objects, affected, renounced and used by nature. These are painted in watercolour (often on vellum) and take the viewer to the hedgerow, wayside or garden, recreating a season, a feeling, a scent or an experience for posterity.  She relishes detail and is passionate about recreating this for the viewer to enjoy and treasure.  She has developed a special commissions service details of which can be found at www.gaelsellwood.co.uk/commissions.