LUCY T. SMITH: MODERN DAY EXPLORER

2020 ASBA Botanical Illustrator Award for Excellence in Scientific Botanical Art

by Susan Tomlinson

This past fall, the American Society of Botanical Artists was pleased to present the 2020 ASBA Botanical Illustrator Award for Excellence in Scientific Botanical Art to Lucy T Smith. She has had a distinguished career in scientific botanical illustration, and works primarily as a freelance botanical illustrator for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (London). The creator of over 600 botanical illustrations, her work has been published in numerous scientific journals and books. She is a multiple-time winner of the prestigious Margaret Flockton Award for Botanical Illustration, and two-time recipient of the RHS Gold Medal. She has taught courses in botanical illustration for Kew since 2013.

In the true spirit of botanical illustration, Lucy’s career is the reflection of an explorer. Perhaps the most notable example of this was a six-week stint at sea she spent aboard a replica of James Cook’s ship, The Endeavor, recreating the experience of the expedition’s original botanical artist, Sydney Parkinson. But the evidence of her adventurous nature started many years earlier, when she designed her own course of study for a degree in art at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. At the time, all she knew was that she wanted to pursue art, but needed also to make a living. So she decided on a degree in illustration, thinking that would be a practical route. But it was her enthusiasm for the environment and working “in the bush” that led some biologist friends to steer her in the direction of botanical work. Knowing how much she loved Hinchinbrook Island and the outdoors, they suggested she look for work as a field assistant to a researcher. At the time, she was just looking for any job that would allow her to be in the field, but as it happened, the biologist who hired her needed someone to do some illustrations for a book he was writing. And with that, she had found a worthy research project for the honors year of her degree program, bringing together art and a love of nature.

There was no one at the college who could teach her about botanical illustration, however, and so she largely taught herself, researching various techniques and applying them to her project. It was hard going, but the project was successful and she graduated with a bachelor of visual arts degree (with honors) in 1994. Eventually, this experience led to many other freelance illustration jobs at the university, and, over time, she began to focus solely on plants as her subject.

A serendipitous encounter in a post office with another botanical illustrator led to a job with John Dowe, PhD, an expert in palms and director of the Townsville Palmetum. Working with him encouraged her to pursue a master of creative arts degree in 1999, with palms as her research subject. Later Dowe was invited by Kew to work on a significant, large-scale project, the Palms of New Guinea (widely known as “PONG”), and he recommended that Lucy Smith be hired as one of the illustrators.

By this time, she was fully committed to the idea of making a living as a botanical illustrator, and so, using a small legacy from an aunt, Lucy bought a round-the-world plane ticket and made her way to England, gambling on the possibility of finding enough work to support her. Once there, she was indeed hired on as one of the freelance illustrators of the New Guinea palms project, which, owing to the immense scope of the research, has provided steady income for more than 20 years.

Lucy says she loved those early days, when she rented a “cheap room in a drafty, damp house,” and walked to work every day. Over time, she became one of the regular illustrators for Kew. She decided to stay in England, recognizing that it was a rare opportunity to make a living as a freelance botanical illustrator. She has worked continuously on the New Guinea project since 1999, creating mostly pen and ink drawings from herbarium specimens. But there have been other assignments as well, including numerous commissioned illustrations of the live plants in Kew’s glasshouses for Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. Her most recent project, a life-sized painting of the giant water lily, Victoria amazonica (regia), is one of a non-commissioned collection inspired by a visit to the Shirley Sherwood Gallery, when she saw Walter Hood Fitch’s depictions of the same plant. Something about Fitch’s drawings and paintings spoke to her. He, too, had started out on the “practical” path of illustrating fabric patterns, but later gambled on a move to London to work for Kew as a botanical illustrator. So perhaps, in spite of the separation of centuries, it was simply a case of one adventurous heart speaking to another. As Lucy said to me in an interview, “I could see from his work that he was searching for something, too.”