Master Art

As one critic has noted of the artist’s watercolours, ‘If traditional botanical drawings capture a flower’s scientific qualities then Rosie Sanders’s paintings celebrate its visceral beauty. Back-lit andblown up out of proportion, they are the sensual stars of Sanders’ canvases, ripe wth colour and movement. While meticulously realistic in execution, they are also larger than life and always painterly...As well as a lustrous quality, her work also has a realism that delights in her subject’s imperfections. A keen gardener, many of Sanders’s blooms are picked from her own garden or grown in her greenhouse and while she will source some from florists, they rarely have the drama her paintings require…Painting is an obsession for Sanders, who pours passion into each piece of work.’

Irises make up a significant proportion of Sanders’s watercolours of flowers. As she has stated, ‘Irises I actually love, it’s one of my most favourite things…Irises are so…sensual and voluptuous and there’s something about the way [the] petals come out…and it’s that that I…want to get the feel of.’ In another interview, Sanders added that ‘I tend to go with the plant. If it moves a bit, I’ll go with it. With irises I would have quite a few Gardening stems because they don’t last long enough for you to do the whole painting. I probably get one large petal done in a day and you come down next morning and it’s died. Then you simply splice another one in…I do like subjects that have a certain presence. I am not so keen on orchids now, they are a bit stiff, whereas irises are so soft and sexy but have this incredible strength. They are like women. They don’t get blown over, they stand tall. They are powerful and feminine.’