Design and Art Australia Online

Wildflower painter, botanical illustrator, author, naturalist, teacher and farmer’s wife, Dr Rica Erickson was born in Boulder, WA, in 1908. She was the daughter of Christopher and Phoebe Louisa Topping Sandilands n_e Cooke. Her maternal grandmother was the redoubtable Nurse Cooke well known in Boulder in the early years of the nineteenth century. Rica won a scholarship to the Eastern Goldfields High School and lived with her grandmother whilst her parents went farming at Kendenup. After monitoring and teacher training she was sent to various one-teacher schools in the South West. Here she commenced painting. She was introduced to Emily Pelloe’s books on Western Australian wildflowers and given an excellent box of Windsor & Newton watercolours, and had private lessons with Brenda Holland in Albany on watercolour techniques.

In 1936 Rica married farmer Sydney Uden Erickson of Bolgart and was compulsorily retired by the Education Department. Four children in four years as well as home schooling for some years meant little time for painting until 1950 when all the children were at school and later boarding school. After exhibiting her paintings at the Wild Life Show in 1946 she was persuaded by Dr Dominic Serventy to write a book to go with them. This began a career in botanical research followed by historical research and then editing. She and her husband travelled round Australia and overseas. In 1964 they retired from the farm to give Rica more access to research facilities. The children were: Dr Dorothy Erickson, artist-jeweller and writer, John, a farmer and vigneron, Bethel, an award-winning photographer, and Robin, a nurse who nursed the Duchess of Windsor.

Rica was the author or editor of some twenty books and collaborated on a number of others. Her Western Australian Biographical Index and Dictionary of Western Australians project was the first project of its kind in the world. In 1980 she was Citizen of the Year for the Arts in Western Australia and awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Western Australia for services in the fields of botany, history and literature. In 1987 she was awarded the Order of Australia (Gen Division) for service to the arts particularly as an author and illustrator. Other awards include Honorary Life Membership of Western Australian Naturalists Club, 1966, Fellow of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society, 1975, Honorary Life Member of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (Western Australian Branch) 1982 and Fellow of the Western Australian Genealogical Society, 1987. In 1991 she had her first solo exhibition. In 1996 the first Western Australian Nature Reserve named after a living person was named in her honour. In 1999 Rica was honoured with the plaque for the year 1980 in the paving stones in St Georges Terrace. In 1999 she was also honoured as an older woman of science in Canberra. In 2006 Rica was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in Western Australian history. In 2007 she won the State Heritage Award for an individual. In 2009 she was one of fifty famous goldfields people profiled in an exhibition in the Museum of the Goldfields, Kalgoorlie.

Writers:

Dr Dorothy Erickson

Date written:

2010

Last updated:

2011