Biography

Victoria Gordon was born in London in 1938, brought up in Silver End, Essex and after the war moved with her family to Kelvedon. Her father, a medical practitioner, was an amateur artist and her brother became an architect.  After attending Colchester School of Art for some four years, she became a student painter at the Royal College of Art where she was a fellow student of David Hockney. A member of the Colchester Art Society from 1968 to 1976 she exhibited at the Minories. Becoming a free-lance scientific illustrator at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, after advice from John Nash (q.v.), she pursued her interest in depicting plants and met and married the Danish Botanist Ib Friis in 1977, and moved to Denmark where she continued to produce botanical illustrations for scientific publications at the University of Copenhagen. She engaged in teaching plant drawing to biology students and held evening classes while contributing watercolour and ink illustrations to the ‘Danish Flora’, a handbook published in 2006 by Gyldendal. Participating in many exhibitions, she showed water colour still lifes, reliefs in plaster of Paris and even decorated harpsichord soundboards in 2001-2. She has been a member of the Artists’ Association (BCF) since 1987, a member of the Artists’ Association of the 18th of November since 1993 and a member of the Danish Graphic Artists’ Association since 2005.

Statement

According to Ian Hay (q.v.), Victoria possesses a profound sense of colour harmony and after many years devoted to accurate and exacting work, using a microscope for her scientific illustration; she is now exploring the freedom of collage, print making and especially the challenge of copperplate etching. Recently her style has evolved into a more abstract form, as in this work.

Selected Exhibitions in the UK

1968 Colchester Art Society Summer Exhibition, February

1971 Colchester Art Society Winter Exhibition, Red and Blue

1974 Colchester Art Society Summer Exhibition, Papara Somniferum

Selected Group Exhibitions in Denmark

1989 Skovhuset Exhibition House, Værløse

Orchids in Art and Science, Munkeruphus, Dronningmølle 1994

2006 The Art of Observation, Munkeruphus, Dronningmølle

1998, 2001, 2002 Gallery Fonseca, Copenhagen

2006 Iagtagelsens Art, Munkeruphus, Dronningmølle 2006

2006 Gammelgaard Gallery, Herlev

2007-9 and 2011-15 Circle, Helligåndshus, Copenhagen

2008 Danish Graphic Anniversary Exhibition, Vejle Art Museum, Veijle

2008 International Mini Print Exhibition, Næstved

Of Sketches, Roskilde Palace

Selected Solo Exhibitions in Denmark

1988 Seminariernes travelling exhibition

1993 and 1998 Gallery Malling

Selected Group Exhibitions abroad

2008 Annual Graphics Exhibition, Lessedra Art Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria

2009 Gallery Bastillon, Copenhagen