< back to members' galleries

Margaret Best 

Margaret Best was born and raised in South Africa. She began drawing and painting at an early age under private tutorage in Johannesburg. After graduating as a teacher in Cape Town, she taught art for a number of years often taking her pupils to sketch and paint in the famous Kirstenbosch Gardens. Before immigrating to Canada in 1981 with her husband and daughter, Margaret became well known for her pen and ink studies of the unique Cape Dutch architecture.

During visits to England in the 90s, Margaret met botanical illustrators and discovered that the art form was experiencing a renaissance globally. She refreshed her watercolour skills in master classes by acclaimed teachers Anne Marie Evans, Lizzie Sanders and Pandora Sellars and has focused on botanical themes ever since. Her work has been widely exhibited since 2001 in venues such as the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Denver Botanical Gardens, New York Horticultural Society Gallery, Ursus Gallery (New York), JB Aird Gallery, Toronto, and ASBA exhibits at the Weisman Museum in Minneapolis and Huntington Gardens, Pasadena. She has also been selected to show her work at RHS shows in England.

Margaret’s watercolours can be found in both private and corporate collections as well as the Hunt Institute of Botanical Documentation in Pittsburgh. Her work has been included in a number of publications, most recently in Today’s Botanical Artists by Cora Marcus and Libby Kyer, a book that showcases 65 artists in North America. Her painting Malus baccata was featured on the front cover of the American Society of Botanical Artists’ newsletter in the fall 2007 edition.

Margaret enjoys teaching private groups as well as workshops in Canada, the USA and England. She has taught a number of times at the Huntington Gardens and Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens in California for the Botanical Arts Guild of Southern California (BAGSC). In 2009 she is scheduled to teach at the San Diego Natural History Museum, Filoli Gardens in San Francisco and at selected venues in England for Focus Botanical Workshops.

Her work can be viewed on her website, www.bestbotanical.com

< back to members' galleries