In October 2015 Jonathan Cooper Park Walk Gallery will be holding an exhibition of new paintings by award-winning botanical artist Rosie Sanders. In these works Rosie sensitively reflects upon the transience of beauty and passage of time, while celebrating growth and renewal in the life cycle of plants.

This exhibition also marks a new direction in Rosie’s art as she explores the dramatic potential of graphite, and introduces a strong narrative element to her work, alluding to the folkloric myths which surround flowers and the prophetic powers with which they have been imbued.

In Loves Me, Loves Me Not, we re-experience the childhood game of anxiously plucking daisy petals to discover if our love is requited, while in A Taste of Things to Come she recalls the tradition of writing suitors’ names on rose petals before blowing them to the wind, discovering the identity of a future husband in the last to reach the ground.

‘Above all in these paintings I am focusing on a sense of fragility and the winds of change.’ – Rosie Sanders, 2015

Rosie Sanders is one of the country’s leading botanical artists and widely known for pushing the boundaries in this field. Her striking close-ups of flower heads in watercolour are painted on a hugely magnified scale, and can be as large as 5ft across and up to ten times bigger than the flowers she is depicting.

She lives and works in Devon, and is a member of the Linnean Society. Self taught, Sanders has gone on to win several awards including; the Royal Academy miniature award in 1985 and five Royal Horticultural Gold Medals. In 2008, her work was included in the inaugural exhibition at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, Kew Gardens.

She is the author of several books, including The English Apple, published by Phaidon Press in 1980 and re-designed, updated and republished as The Apple Book by Frances Lincoln in 2010.