With meticulous patience and a deep love of nature, Pauleen Trim’s delicate work has twice won the RHS’s highest honour for botanical art
Pauleen Trim grew up surrounded by wildflowers, plants and trees in Winterborne Whitechurch, one of the villages that follow the meandering winter bourne (stream) south from Blandford.
She still lives in the village, with her husband Jim, surrounded by friends, family – and that beautiful landscape of fields, hedges, trees and gentle hills.
She always loved painting and drawing, but it was only when she retired, after many years teaching a wide range of art courses, that she really fell in love with nature.
That love, and her remarkable talent as an artist, which earned her membership of the exclusive Society of Botanical Artists, have together brought her not one but two coveted RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) gold medals at the prestigious RHS botanical art exhibition.
In 2021, one of her suite of gold-medal-winning illustrations of six trees was chosen as Best in Show. This year, she again won gold with another tree series, in the RHS show at the Saatchi gallery.
From childhood, Pauleen (the unusual spelling was a mistake when her birth was registered!) knew she was keen on art – at one point she imagined a career in fashion design. She was offered a place at a leading London art school but didn’t take it up and instead went to work for the then Dorset County Council. She took an ONC in public administration, and went on to marry Jim and have two children. Her father, Robert Maidment, was a well-known local builder who built his own home, and Pauleen and Jim’s.
She carried on painting and joined the Blandford Art Society, where she was one of a small group taking a diploma in fine art. Towards the end of this course she was asked if she would consider teaching, and after taking an Adult Education course at Ferndown she stepped in to run a leisure painters’ course at Bovington. She moved on to a temporary post at Bournemouth and Poole college at the Lansdowne, where she taught art to students on other courses (including floristry and hairdressing). It became a permanent job, and for 25 years she taught art, eventually specialising in theatre make-up and costume design.
Throughout her life, Pauleen has continued to learn – while working at the college, she took a City & Guilds course in textiles and is one of a small group who have just visited Transylvania to learn about and paint the uniquely unspoiled plants, flowers and trees of this region, where farming follows a pre-chemical agricultural cycle. She is also an accomplished miniaturist, and has been a member of the Hilliard Society of Miniature Art for about 30 years.
A rigorous process
The art of botanical illustration demands exceptional precision and attention to detail. Every element, from the shape of a petal to the texture of the bark, must be captured with lifelike accuracy. Botanical artists must be skilled in traditional painting techniques and have a deep understanding of the plant’s structure and growth. The process is time-consuming and meticulous, with work usually created at life size to showcase the true characteristics of the subject. For artists like Pauleen, the journey from sketch to finished piece involves not only artistic talent but also a thorough knowledge of botany and the natural world.
After she retired 12 years ago she found some paintings of flowers and plants that she had done in the 1970s and 80s and they reignited her interest. She took a course in botanical illustration at Kingston Maurward College. ‘I just thought “Wow!” I fell in love with looking at nature,’ she says.
She joined the South West Society of Botanical Artists, went on to do a diploma in the medium, and was advised by a teacher to start exhibiting. She submitted some work to the Society of Botanical Artists and was accepted as a member in 2018 after having five works accepted in two consecutive years. It has now changed a bit, but is still a complicated and demanding procedure – the current system is to submit a set number of paintings which go before a panel, whose members decide if the artist is to be offered SBA Fellowship status.
There is a similarly rigorous process for the annual RHS exhibition. The artist must submit four paintings (professional quality life-size prints) which go before a selection panel.
If the work is deemed to be silver standard (or above) you have five years to develop an exhibit comprising six pieces of botanical illustration on a coherent plant theme. Once they are completed, you apply for space to exhibit in the RHS annual art show.
The paintings are taken to the Saatchi Gallery and framed. When hung, they are judged by an RHS panel and the awards are given. The level of award is based on all six paintings, so to attain a gold medal, all six have to be of gold standard. If one is not, the whole exhibit award is based on the lowest standard painting.
In 2021, Pauleen submitted six tree paintings including the ash illustration – all six were awarded gold, and the ash was chosen as Best in Show. This year’s six, exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery, were also trees, and once again all won gold. For future SBA/RHS exhibitions Pauleen aims to show other botanical paintings.
Pauleen is on Instagram @pauleentrim8 – where she shares much of her work.
