Our choice of modern flower painting for December is a picture by Scottish artist Anne Cotterill (1933-2010).  It’s a good selection for this time of year, as it shows a jug full of Christmas roses.  Helleborus niger, to give it its  botanical name, is one of the few flowers to bloom during the depths of winter – thus gaining its common name of Christmas rose.  Gardeners love hellebores (both the Christmas Rose and the Lenten Rose Helleborus orientalis ) for another reason too.  As well as having beautiful winter flowers, the plants are a great choice for difficult areas of the garden.  They don’t mind partial shade, and are easy to grow.  Sadly, they aren’t really suitable for living walls.  They don’t mind being in a container, but it needs to be a deep one.  This is because their roots mostly grow down and they don’t like being transplanted.

Anne Cotterill was born in Scotland and graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1956.  In the 1960s she moved to Somerset with her husband where the flowers were a constant source of inspiration for her paintings. Her paintings have a fresh vitality, partly due to the way she arranges the flowers informally in one of her own vases, pots, or jugs. Her detailed understanding of botany is combined with strong artistic technique, which makes a great mix.  She set up  Millhouse Fine Art  with her daughter, and you can see lots more of her work on their website.  As far as modern flower painting goes, she was a very talented artist!