In a world that seems to move faster with every passing year, where so much of what we see is viewed for a few seconds on a screen before being replaced by the next image, I think there is something increasingly valuable about an art form that asks us to do precisely the opposite.

Botanical painting asks us to stop, look carefully and to actually spend time with something.

It might be a flower we have walked past a few times this week, a leaf picked from the garden, a seed pod, a sprig of herbs or a tiny piece of a plant that would ordinarily go completely unnoticed, but when you sit down with the intention of painting it, you begin to see just how extraordinarily complicated and beautiful it actually is.

Learning to really look

One of the things botanical painting has taught me more than anything else is how little we sometimes really look at the world around us.

We know that a leaf is green, for example, but when you begin to paint one you realise that it might contain yellow, blue, olive, grey and even touches of red or purple. You notice that the veins do not run exactly as you imagined, that the edges aren’t perfectly symmetrical, that one side curls towards the light while another disappears into shadow, and that the colour changes almost imperceptibly from one part of the leaf to another.

This kind of observation feels particularly important now, because we are surrounded by things competing for our attention and encouraging us to move quickly from one thing to the next. Botanical painting requires a very different sort of attention; it asks us to stay with something for long enough to understand it - and see the wonder in it.

I think there is enormous value in that.

A record of the natural world

Botanical art has a long and fascinating history, and for centuries it was an important way of recording and identifying plants before photography existed.

Beautiful botanical illustrations were not created simply for decoration; they needed to communicate information accurately, showing the structure, characteristics and details of a plant clearly enough for it to be recognised and studied.

Photography has obviously transformed the way we document the natural world, but I don’t think that has made botanical painting irrelevant... at all! In some ways, it has made the artist’s interpretation even more interesting and valuable.

A botanical artist makes decisions about what deserves attention, which details need to be emphasised and how best to communicate the character of a particular specimen. We aren’t simply recording what a camera sees; we are observing, interpreting and translating it with and through paint.

Also, in a time when we are becoming increasingly conscious of biodiversity, disappearing habitats and the fragility of the natural world, I think there is something deeply meaningful about continuing to document the plants that surround us.

Making something slowly

There is another reason I think botanical painting matters today, and it has less to do with plants and more to do with the act of making something by hand.

A detailed watercolour painting can take hours, days or sometimes much longer to complete. There are no shortcuts to building those transparent layers, waiting for washes to dry, mixing colours, studying the reference and gradually adding the tiny details that bring a subject to life.

This slowness can occasionally be frustrating, but it is also one of the things I love most about botanical painting in particular.

We live in a time when technology can produce an image almost instantly, and that technology is extraordinary in its own right, but I don’t believe that makes the process of creating something slowly and carefully with our own hands any less valuable. If anything, perhaps it makes it more so.

There is value in the hours themselves, in the concentration required and in gradually developing a skill that cannot be acquired instantly.

Reconnecting with nature

Also hugely important in today’s fast paced world: botanical painting gives us a wonderfully simple way of reconnecting with the natural world.

You don’t need an extraordinary garden or an exotic specimen to find something worth painting. Some of the most fascinating subjects can be found just outside the back door: a fallen leaf, a weed, a tomato from the vegetable garden (or the shops!), a sprig of rosemary or a flower that is beginning to fade.

When we paint these things, we start noticing them differently in everyday life too.

I find myself looking at the colours of leaves, studying flowers in gardens and noticing the shapes of seed heads and grasses because painting has trained my eye to pay attention to them. The more closely you look at nature, the more extraordinary it becomes, and I don’t think you ever really reach the end of what there is to discover.

Keeping an old skill alive

There is definitely something rather wonderful about being part of a tradition that stretches back hundreds of years.

The materials may have changed slightly and our reasons for painting may be different, but the fundamental process remains beautifully simple: we sit in front of a piece of paper, look carefully at something from the natural world and try to recreate what we see using pigment, water and a brush.

I love the thought that this skill continues to be learned and passed on.

It doesn’t have to be perfect, and you certainly don’t have to become a professional botanical artist for the practice to have value. Simply learning to observe, mix colour, control water and translate what you see onto paper is worthwhile in itself.

For me, botanical painting is about far more than producing a beautiful picture of a flower. It is about attention, patience, curiosity and developing a genuine appreciation for the extraordinary design and detail found in the natural world. It teaches us that becoming good at something takes time, that looking carefully reveals things we would otherwise miss, and that there is still enormous satisfaction in creating something slowly with our own hands.

Perhaps that is why, despite being such an old art form, botanical painting feels surprisingly relevant to the world we live in now.

When everything around us encourages speed, botanical painting encourages patience. When we are surrounded by screens, it brings us back to the tactility of paper, pigment and water, and when our attention is constantly being pulled in a dozen different directions, it asks us to focus on something as small and seemingly ordinary as the curve of a petal or the vein of a leaf.

And I think that's why Botanical Painting couldn't be more important, relevant and valuable to us today.

Love, Libby x