Mary Grierson, botanical artist

摘要

Miry Anderson Grierson reflects "It'been a great life. But I haven't sought it. Tt has just all happened." Her watercolour botamcal paintings arc admired the world over for their almost miraculous accuracy, meticulous accomplishment, and sure composition. Now in her late eighties. Mary recalls with clarity and pleasure a career which began only in middle age, but has brought her deep satisfaction as well as universal praise. She was born in Bangor. north Wales, in 1912, the youngest of three children born to Lowland Scots parents. Her mother was an artist, who worked in oils, and Mary was encouraged to paint from a young age, although she always hated the smell of oil paints, preferring watercolonrs instead. As a schoolgirl she often walked in themountains andon Anglesey with friends, looking at flowers. At school she was encouraged in both botany and art. but hated exams so much that she refused to go to university, travelling instead to Germany to teach English to the children of a north German landowner before taking a domestic science course in Battersea. For a time in the 1930s she worked as a confectioner but, when her parents became unwell, she went home to look after them.