With a longstanding passion for flowers, Anne-Marie Butlin paints fervent, vibrant scenes with a strong sense of place and personality. Finding inspiration in English gardens and landscapes, she is drawn to subtle plant combinations, nuances of shape and patterns of stems and leaves.
Combining traditional technical skill with modern sensibility, Butlin’s paintings exude a deep admiration for their subject and manage to enable the viewer to feel completely immersed in the garden space.
“In the same way that gardens are a place of sanctuary for many of us – a refuge in which we can relax and contemplate our place in the natural world – I hope to create paintings which are a source of calm and positivity. I have been particularly inspired by some special gardens which I have visited in the past few years. The exhibition invitation features the prairie planting at Tom & Sue Stuart-Smith’s beautiful Serge Hill garden. The garden of Charleston Farmhouse in high summer has also inspired a number of paintings, as well as Sarah Raven’s beautiful Perch Hill garden, Cambridge Botanic Garden and Chelsea Physic Garden amongst others, including front gardens and ‘guerilla’ gardened spaces near where I live in North London,” explains Butlin.
Painting and exhibiting for 30 years, Butlin studied Fine Art at Loughborough College of Art and Middlesex University. She lives in North London’s Crouch End and paints full-time from her garden studio.
Butlin’s ‘In and Out of the Garden’, exhibition takes place at the Thackeray Gallery in London, from the 1st-18th of July, 2025. The exhibition consists of 26 works, including a number of still-life paintings based on the produce of the featured gardens, and a series of work based on trees and forests.
