Cornelia Büchen-Osmond

Born into an academic and artistic family, Cornelia Büchen-Osmond grew up in Frankfurt, Germany. Both of her maternal grandparents were accomplished painters in Berlin as were two of their sons, but her mother was not blessed with artistic talents, and Cornelia was not encouraged to pursue art during her youth. Although photography was already a favourite hobby in high school, it was while gardening on weekend and holiday walks with her father, a physicist, that she learned to observe and appreciate plants.

Educated at Foothill College, California and the University of Frankfurt, her studies in biology and geography focused an understanding of the environment and led to an abiding love of plants.

Dr Büchen-Osmond retired in 2004 after a rewarding career in virology that in 1991 led to creation and curation of the first biological database on the Web (ICTVdB) at the Research School of Biological Sciences at the ANU. Having spent years in darkrooms with electron microscopes and later computers Cornelia looked forward to enjoying life outdoors in retirement, indulging reading, travelling, gardening, and digital photography.

In April 2010 she enrolled for a CIT course in “Botanical Illustration” for beginners. Guided by Belinda Ingram’s sensitive and expert instruction, Cornelia discovered passion for painting in watercolour. In 2011 she joined the Botanical Art Group at the Australian National Botanical Gardens, with whom she shares a remarkable fellowship and group learning experience that continues with the “Nutters” (Gumnuts) at Strathnairn, an arts association supported by the ACT Government. Since 2012, Cornelia regularly participates in the Annual Botanical Art Group exhibitions at the Australian National Botanical Gardens, Canberra Botanical exhibitions and Strathnairn Art. She also exhibited successfully in several botanical art exhibitions including Beechworth Botanica, Victoria, Flora exhibitions of the Botanical Art Society of Australia, Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney and at the World-Wide International Botanical Art exhibition 2018 in Canberra.

Her work has been collected in the Australia and can be found in Japan, Europe, the UK and USA, and in scientific publications.