Painting Flowers in Watercolour: A Naturalistic Approach

Coral G. Guest is an acclaimed flower painter whose work combines botanical authenticity with a highly appealing artistic style. Her classical training as a painter at Chelsea School of Art, London was followed by the practice of Zen Calligraphy at Seitai-Ji Temple in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. She first embarked upon a series of flower pictures in the mid 1980s as part of her meditations on nature. She considers the study of plants to be a worthy subject for a contemporary painter, and has conducted her highly successful courses on naturalistic flower painting at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, for a number of years. She has received numerous awards (including two RHS Gold Medals), frequently lectures, and has written for various magazines. Her work is shown internationally, and is represented in many public and private collections, including the Royal Horticultural Society, Lindley Library; the Dr Shirley Sherwood Collection of Contemporary Botanical Art; and the Hunt Botanical Institute.