2025 Daleen Roodt - American Society of Botanical Artists

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DALEEN ROODT

Lizzie Sanders New Artist Award

Story by CAROL WOODIN

The Lizzie Sanders New Artist Award is given in memory of Lizzie by her children Robin and Toby Sanders, and it recognizes and encourages exemplary new artists and honors the extraordinary example Lizzie set. The artists eligible are “new to ASBA” and may have been working several years, however, their first time participating in one of ASBA’s exhibitions has to have been within the past two years. When drawing up criteria for the award, several aspects of Lizzie’s own work were used. It is evaluated for impeccable botanical accuracy, an exceedingly high artistic standard, and lifelike color and form. Fresh, unusual, and ambitious compositions are a plus. What was agreed upon wholeheartedly was what the team called “the WOW factor.”

Daleen Roodt, the 2025 recipient, creates paintings that are never short of the WOW factor. Her work is always fresh and lifelike, and often she composes complex groupings of the subject plant, its habitat companions, and pollinators. Her works draw from a personal engagement with the subject plants where they live and grow, as she does, in the landscape of South Africa.

She describes her beginnings in botanical art with freelance scientific illustration for the University of Pretoria in 2008, followed in 2010 by a two-year contract with the Francolin Conservancy. Asked to paint the Indigenous flora on the Conservancy's property, she came into contact with the first wild orchid she had ever seen. “It just took me and it hasn’t stopped!” Ever since that time, she has been fascinated with seeking them out, and is especially drawn to the high-elevation grasslands of the Drakensberg Mountains near her home and further afield, to the south in the Cape Floral Region. While other plant families find their way into her paintings, she is best known for her devotion to making a series of paintings of some of the most charismatic orchids in the world.

Her passion and enthusiasm are clear, and her paintings are meant to convey the excitement of discovery she experiences when gathering information in nature. She follows no pattern for composition, instead responding to what is happening within and around the plant. Her goal is to instill in the viewer a sense that they’re being transported to that place, and for “it to be so real that that their eyes are opened to how incredible creation and nature are.” Even with the interweaving of several species in most of her paintings, they express an incredible natural unity. The RHS recognized her 2024 exhibition, South African Orchids: Specialized Pollination Interactions, with a Gold Medal and the Best Botanical Artwork Award, and the audience voted it the People’s Choice Award.

Acrolophia micrantha, 16 1/2 x 11 3/4 in,

Daleen Roodt

A participating artist in the Grootbos Florilegium, Daleen has painted several orchids for its collection and took on a project to document some of the significant mosses found on the private nature reserve. Spending time at Grootbos peering at the tiny plants under a microscope, she saw an incredible world opening up. That experience informed a decision to paint them larger than life in watercolor, along with a small, life-sized vignette in silverpoint.

Chris Lochner, Grootbos Florilegium Curator, says, “Daleen’s passion is inspiring. Her technical skills shine through in her detailed and accurate work, but her inclusion of parts of the subject’s habitat also shows her deep love for the ecology of the plants. Not one to shy away from a challenge, Daleen often spends hours in the field to make detailed observations of rare plants in situ. Her work will undoubtedly inspire viewers for years to come.” She describes how the Grootbos project has brought artists together with everyone of a similar mindset and motivation. It has provided her with another vehicle in which to do what she finds most important – communicate with others about the importance of biodiversity.

We look forward to seeing more of Daleen’s remarkable watercolors in upcoming exhibitions, and extend our congratulations to her for this award.