Lynne with her son Tristan Freeman at the launch in the Robert Brown Building at the Botanical Gardens in Sydney of: Botanica: The Art of Deception and Disguise 2025. Lynne’s painting of the Orchid and the Wasp was on vellum.
PUBLICATIONS IN 2025
RHS Botanical Illustration - The Gold Medal Winners by Charlotte Brooks 2025
Double page spread in the Botanical Artist - the magazine of the American Society of Botanical Artists. 2025
2025 Botanical Art Worldwide Online was an initiative of the American Society of Botanical Artists (ASBA).
ASBA invited the Botanical Art Society of Australia (BASA) to take part in an international online showing of 40 works from each country to celebrate the Worldwide Day of Botanical Art on May 18, 2025.
Australia’s contribution was 40 artworks depicting bush foods from artists from around Australia. BASA also held a larger exhibition of the work received for selection in Canberra.
Lynne’s contribution was Banskia praemosa
Lynne was invited to become an Artist Member of the Sydney Florilegium which is based at the Botanic Gardens Sydney.
The word ‘florilegium’, literally a gathering of flowers, was first used in 1590 to describe a publication that focused on the beauty of plants rather than their medicinal value. Florilegia flourished from the 17th century to the late 19th century, during which time they portrayed collections of rare and exotic plants. Modern florilegia record collections of plants from within a particular garden or place rather than new species from afar.
Banksia marginata
Painting Banksia marginata for the Bett Gallery exhibition in 2023
THE ARTIST
Lynne wanted to be an artist before she knew the meaning the word. She left Sydney High School to take up a scholarship at the National Art School and went on to be an illustrator in a Sydney agency for 13 years. While her various careers have been primarily in the arts, it was not until 2019 that she discovered Botanical Art as her passion.
Friends encouraged her to undertake a workshop with visiting Melbourne botanical artist Jenny Williams and it was love at the fist lick of a Winsor & Newton Series 7 00 paintbrush.
From there Lynne decided she needed to know the protocols around being taken seriously as a botanical artist and enrolled in the Distance Learning Course presented by the Society of Botanical Artists (SBA) in England. Two years later and 2 workshops in Wales with leading botanical artists saw her receive her Diploma with the top marks for the Year. From there, she was accepted as a Fellow of the SBA and has received Awards in their annual Plantae exhibitions.
The Botanical Art Society of Australia’s exhibition in Hobart in 2021 led to the sale of her first major work and an invitation by Hobart’s Bett Gallery. She exhibited there in 2022, 2023 and 2025.
In 2023/24 Lynne focussed on developing a body of works for exhibition which is a study of 6 of the species of the genus Richea, a plant with ancient and fascinating origins. The majority of the species are endemic to Tasmania’s World Heritage temperate rainforests.
In 2024, this body of work was accepted into the 2024 RHS Botanical Art & Photography Show at the Saatchi Gallery London, where she was awarded the Trophy by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) for Best Botanical Art Exhibit, along with a Gold Medal.
Invited to be an Artist Member of the Sydney Florilegium, she contributed a work to Rainforest Species at Risk: Art / Science / Ecosystems exhibition in May 2024 at the opening of new Garden Gallery, Botanic Gardens Sydney.
Although relatively new to Botanical art, Lynne has worked in the arts all of her life, including owning and operating a large artisan pottery, a hot glass studio, and 2 two commercial galleries in Sydney.
In Tasmania, Lynne was Director of Arts Tasmania, the State’s arts funding body, for 20 years and was awarded an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) in 2010 for services to arts administration.