Polly O’leary

Biography

Polly graduated from the SBA Distance Learning Diploma Course with Distinction in 2014 and was elected as a Fellow Member in 2016.  She was awarded Highly Commended for the Joyce Cuming Award in 2015 and a Certificate of Botanical Merit in 2016.

In 2017, while demonstrating botanical techniques with the SBA at the RHS Botanical Art Exhibition, she was encouraged to start teaching.  As well as tutoring more widely, she also tutors for London Art College and in 2021 she will become a tutor with the SBA.

A lifelong interest in plants and growing things combines with her interest in colour and how light affects surfaces, and inspires her objective of telling the story of plants through composition, form, structure and detail.  She also studies pigments and watercolour paper and blogs about the results, publishing the results of her watercolour light-fastness testing in 2018.

In 2018 Polly was one of the 40 artists from the UK chosen to take part in the Worldwide Botanical Art Exhibition, In Ruskin’s Footsteps at Lancaster University, and also took part in the SBA exhibition Tulipa-Tulipae in Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid.

She has illustrated for The English Garden Magazine, the cover of the De Jager Bulb Catalogue and the Orchid Society GB Journal.

She is currently working on the exhibition of a body of work with the Royal Horticultural Society.

Contact Details

Web: https://pollyoleary.co.uk/
Email: pollyoleary.artist@gmail.com