"A dream come true" as Lynne Uptin is awarded both the Gold Medal and the 2024 Best Botanical Art Exhibit Award at the Royal Horticultural Society Botanical Art and Photography Exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London. This prestigious exhibition is open only by invitation, sent to a select few of the best botanical artists in the world.
As a further nod to this achievement, the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery acquired the full suite of winning works. Lynne's next exhbition is scheduled for November 2025 at Bett Gallery.
Trained at the National Art School Sydney, Lynne practiced as a leading illustrator in Sydney for 13 years before owning and opening two art galleries, a ceramic and a glass art studio. In 2021 Lynne was awarded the UK Society of Botanical Artists Dip SBA (Dist.) also receiving the SBA Award of Excellence for the highest overall marks on the 3 year course. In March, Lynne was made an SBA Fellow. Lynne's first exhbition at Bett Gallery in 2022, Banks' Banksias was a complete sell out, with her highly anticipated second exhibition, Kunanyi - A Botanical Jounrney equally as successful.
For her previous exhibitions, Lynne drew much of her inspiration from her garden on the D’Entrecasteaux Channel at Middleton, where she cultivated many of the distinctive Gondwanan plants that became isolated when Tasmania separated from Antarctica some 40 million years ago. From her new studio in Battery Point, she now looks to kunanyi/Mount Wellington—a miraculous remnant of temperate wilderness—for similar inspiration. The collections of the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens and the Tasmanian Herbarium are also close at hand to support her practice. Lynne is an Artist Member of the Florilegium of the Botanic Gardens in Sydney and a Fellow of the Society of Botanical Artists in London.