FIONA STRICKLAND: GOOD REASON TO BE CHUFFED

2020 ASBA Diane Bouchier Artist Award for Excellence in Botanical Art 

by Scott O. Stapleton

When their two daughters married, Fiona Strickland gave to her husband, Robert McNeill, a keepsake, a coaster with the word “chuffed” prominently displayed on it. The coaster reappeared in a posting she made on her Facebook page for another momentous occasion, the last look at her tulip paintings back from the framer before they were wrapped up again and sent off to Jonathan Cooper Gallery in London for what turned out to be her wildly successful exhibition, Fiona Strickland: Tulipa.

Each of these elements was reason enough to be chuffed, to be greatly pleased, that is, with how things turned out: yes, their daughters’ marriages; but also Robert himself, her soulmate from art school days (and she, his); the finished paintings—finally!—and all that went in to their making; the spectacular tulips depicted therein—English Florists’ specimens redolent of tulipomania, not to mention her grandmother’s tulip-filled greenhouse, and now available only through the Wakefield and North England Tulip Society; the exquisite framing done by Framework Picture Framers in Edinburgh; the paintings’ destination, Jonathan Cooper’s renowned gallery specializing in flora and fauna art; and last but hardly least, the exhibition’s near sellout success culminating in the purchase of Tulipa ‘Blumex Parrot’, the painting reproduced on the cover of the March 2021 issue of The Botanical Artist, by Shirley Sherwood, PhD, OBE.

On the five-hour train ride down to London to present her first efforts to the SBA, Fiona was extremely nervous. She hoped some of her work would be accepted, but she had no confidence that it would. She had never been to a botanical art exhibition.

Looking back, it’s tempting to say all this was inevitable. Her mastery of color, her flair for the dramatic, her painstaking devotion to her craft—there were signs present from the beginning for all of them. Both her parents were supportive. Her father even introduced her to botanical art with the book, Contemporary Botanical Artists: The Shirley Sherwood Collection (George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd, 1996). And browsing through it, she was immediately drawn to what she saw. It even included a painting by one of her favorite teachers at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA), Elizabeth Blackadder. And then, Scotland itself, her native land, was and still is every bit as hospitable to botanical art as its neighbor to the south. How could it have turned out otherwise?



Easy to say looking back, not so easy looking forward. Who among us does not work out their botanical art salvation with fear and trembling?

Fiona learned to do it with “time and patience.” She credits her father-in-law with revealing this wisdom: “A wise man once told me that crafting quality in order to reach a desired goal takes ‘time and patience’.” He used to say it while building the studio that she and Robert share. But it could also be that she acquired this knowledge herself thanks to the peculiar form of education practiced at ECA, a form most often associated with England’s premier universities, Oxford and Cambridge, the tutorial.

Tutorials consist of small groups of students who, under the guidance of their tutors, orally present their written-up findings to their peers and their tutor for the sake of bracing discussion. The presenters are themselves presented with a stream of questions which they must answer. In consequence, they learn to clarify their thoughts and either defend their work as is or accept the criticism implicit in the questioning. They must, in short, learn to think for themselves.

Fiona went through a similar experience at ECA. Here is the effect it had on her.

Edinburgh College of Art for me wasn’t a college where students were taught a particular technique, method of application, how to draw a figure, or the complexities of color. These things were never demonstrated. I never observed any of my tutors drawing or painting. Students developed their own skills facilitated by tutor questioning, strengthening the student’s own creativity. I always felt ECA didn’t train you how to paint but rather trained you how to BE an artist.

And how to see more. Her interest in color, for example, perhaps her most consuming preoccupation now, is a case in point. It did not show up until her final year in college when she had to clarify her thoughts on canvas. All along, her tutors had challenged her to think harder about her work. So, when it came time to present her findings, it is not at all surprising that she discovered she had become “interested in color working large 8 ft. canvases with vibrant and subdued color.” (Her passion then was abstract art.)

The juxtaposition of vibrant and subdued is telling. The two normally don’t go together. For an artist pursuing evocative, memorable paintings, however, they’re a must. But only an eye practiced in patient questioning—How is this color affected by that one?—will paint such a painting.

The painting she was commissioned to paint by the Royal Mail in 2014 for their Great War Stamp Program—part of the UK’s centenary commemoration of the end of World War 1—illustrates this dynamic. It was of a poppy, of course, and in that red she practically owns. But in her hands, it was not just one red—poppy red—or even a handful of them. It was a great many poppy reds jarring with each other under the panoply of light spread across the flower’s diaphanous surfaces. And as she painted them, each minute, patient brushstroke evoked in her a surprising and, indeed, an overwhelming emotional response to “the immeasurable sacrifices made and the suffering endured by all those involved in the Great War.” The net result was a sobering memorial which, nevertheless, still conveyed a subtle possibility of hope.

It can be said of a Fiona Strickland painting that the sum of its parts is just as great as its whole. There is no question that when viewed from a distance, all her paintings are stunning, for that is when their dynamic character is readily apparent. But up close and personal, when you’re hemmed in by looming folds and color-saturated petals, when abstraction begins to take over and you’re caught up in the swirling vortex, that’s just as great an experience, too.