This is the story of Celia Rosser, internationally acclaimed botanical illustrator, who dedicated her life to painting the entire genus of Banksia, the only artist to have done so. Her dedication to the task put her at the centre of the Monash Banksia Project for twenty-five years, and culminated in the production of an extraordinary three-volume florilegium that became one of the great books published in the twentieth century. Banksia Lady reveals the emergence of an artist who grew up in difficult circumstances during the Great Depression and who pursued her art as a way of protecting herself from the harsher side of life. The story follows Celia's struggle to pursue her artistic passion while fulfilling the expectations that women of the 1950s would subordinate themselves as wives and mothers. As her children became more independent, she recognised opportunities and, eventually, found a place at Monash University to fully express herself through her art. In telling this story of Celia Rosser's unparalleled talent and extraordinary achievement, this book explores the history of botanical illustration, botany, academia, gardens and their herbarium, and Australia's place in changing the shape of the world.
Carolyn Landon is co-author with Daryl Tonkin of Jackson's Track: Memoir of a Dreamtime Place (Penguin, Australia, 1999). Born in the USA, she came to Australia in 1968 as a traveller, hitchhiking by small aeroplane throughout the far north. A teacher in Australian state schools for almost thirty years, she has written and published several musical plays with her husband, Larry Hills. Landon has a Masters degree in biography and life writing from Monash University. In 2008 she published a biography of Bette Boyanton, Cups with No Handles: Memoirs of a Grassroots Activist (Ormond, Victoria: Hybrid Publishers).
Rosser, now in her eighties, lives in a house near Wilsons Promontory with a front door made of banksia wood. Her gallery, where many of her paintings can be seen, is next door. Visitors, if fortunate, can hear firsthand the artists tales of decades of travel search of every banksia in its place of first recording. Landons biography captures both the spirit of the woman and the momentousness of her artistic achievement. Fiona Gruber, Australian Review of Books October 2015