Margaret Stones (1920 - present) set goals
for herself early in life, and she has held to those goals tenaciously.
During World War II, while nursing in her native Australia, she
contracted tuberculosis and was hospitalized for more than a year.
It was in this time of confinement that she resolved to pursue
a career as a botanical artist. She has said that she regards
this period of forced rest as a blessing, for it provided with
time for reflection from which any young person making life choices
might benefit.
Before her illness, Margaret Stones has
studied at the Swinburne and National Gallery art schools in Melbourne.
After her illness, she determined to continue her work in art,
specializing in botanical drawing. She studied botany and went
on botanical field trips in the mountains of Australia. In 1951-
with no connections, no guarunteed income, no resources other
than her talent and will - she went to Kew Gardens in Surrey,
England, to work with the botanists there. She has lived and worked
at Kew ever since, with many of her drawings being commissioned
by the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Royal Horticultural Society.
Her published work can be seen in
The Endemic Flora of Tasmania,
Curtis's Botanical Magazine, and various botanical monographs.
Her principal collections are in the Royal Botanical Gardens,
Kew; Royal Horticulture Society, London; Royal Botanical Gardens,
Edinburg; the Queen Victoria Museum, Launceston, Tasmania; The
Australian National Library, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria,
Melbourne; and Morton Arboretum, Lisle, Illinois. She has been
exhibiting since 1952 at Colnaghi, London.
A vital and warm human, one who reads and
responds to the life about her, Margaret Stones draws only living
specimens. Even among living plants, she selects those that engage
her. That she has chosen, thus, to draw the flora of Louisiana
is both a tribute to the state's natural beauties and a source
of great pride for present and future residents of the state.
Louisiana State University commissioned
her to prepare two hundred drawings in watercolor of the flora
of Louisiana.
Twelve of the two-hundred drawings were
offered as prints in an edition limited to five hundred, signed
and numbered by the artist.
