Coral Guest
was raised in north west London and studied Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art, specialising in
abstraction and colour theory. She was awarded both the Drawing Prize and the Chelsea Travel Scholarship.
The life size paintings of plants
, which she describes as
truth to nature, have since evolved to become some of the most ground breaking of
the genre, fuelling the recent renaissance of Botanical Art in Europe. Perhaps most well known for her
paintings and drawings of white flowers, her work captures the essential spirit of plant life by
describing natural beauty in natural light. In 2004 she was invited by BBC Wales to participate in
the TV documentary series
Painting Flowers, in which she is filmed working on a watercolour of the
iconic white lily. Her paintings and drawings are represented in major public and private collections of
botanical art, including the Royal Horticultural Society Lindley Library, the Shirley Sherwood Collection
of Contemporary Botanical Art, the Hunt Botanic Institute, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
The book
that catalogues her unique methodology,
Painting Flowers in Watercolour – a naturalistic approach, has become
a standard handbook for flower painters. She was Flower Painting Tutor at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew from
1991 to 2002, and has given Master Classes for Dr Shirley Sherwood in Europe and the USA. Her innovative
lectures and writings on the use of negative space in composition have influenced a new generation of botanical
artists, from the painter to the scientific illustrator.