Lisa Strachan
CAPTURING THE BEAUTY OF NATURE IN WATERCOLOUR
The objective of the botanical illustrator is to take nature’s challenge and reproduce it as perfectly and scientifically as possible… young up-and-coming Cape Town artist Lisa Strachan does it so well that the botanists she works closely with at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens sometimes wonder if she’s pressed the plant into the page!
Lisa specialises in rare indigenous plants and her work has been exhibited and collected in South Africa, the UK, USA, Europe, Ireland and Australia. Kirstenbosch’s resident succulent expert, Ernst van Jaarsveld, has commissioned her to illustrate his book on cliff dwellers and recently flew in some extremely rare aloe species from the Transkei and Namibia for her to paint. “I’ve just completed three life size drawings of the aloes, which nobody else will be able to paint very easily simply because they are so difficult to get to,” says Lisa.
She paints the living plants in watercolour so has to work to a stringent deadline in unbelievably minute detail to capture the species at its best (that is, before it wilts or dies!)
Her career started in 2002 when she was the youngest recipient ever to receive a bronze medal at the Biennale Exhibition of Kirstenbosch, organised by the Botanical Society of South Africa. She was also awarded a bronze medal at the subsequent exhibitions in 2004 and 2006.
In 2002, 2003 and 2006, Lisa was selected from a pool of international artists to exhibit at Filoli in San Francisco, an historic site that is dedicated to horticulture, art, architecture, decorative art and floral design.
She was also invited to exhibit in London at the Royal Horticultural Society Show in Winter 2004 and was awarded a silver medal for her selection.
Lisa’s latest international commission is by UK porcelain company, Churchill China, which has purchased three of her designs to release globally on a set of beautiful white mugs.
