Winter in New England: What’s a Botanical Artist to Do?

Winter in New England: What’s a Botanical Artist to Do?

A wonderful thing about living in New England is the annual seasonal changes that come almost like clockwork. Spring, summer, and fall bring the natural world to life. Green becomes a dominant landscape color. Garden perennials and native wildflowers begin to grow. Bulbs pop through the soil after a long-needed rest. Trees and woody shrubs blossom. Summer brings blooms of glorious colors from gardens to hills, and valleys, and even the seashore. Then comes fall, with it’s stunning foliage in every shade of red, orange and gold. The days get cooler and shorter until one can’t ignore what’s coming : winter, the season of grays and browns.

INSPIRATION: SPOTLIGHT ON WAVE HILL

INSPIRATION: SPOTLIGHT ON WAVE HILL

Inspiration

By Anne Brownlee-Fisher

Spotlight on: Wave Hill

In 2018 and again in 2020 Wave Hill hosted the 21st and 23rd Annual International respectively, a juried exhibition of American Society of Botanical Artists, hosting works from May thru December 6th, 2020. Described as an 'oasis in the Bronx' by the New York Times, Wave Hill is an unconventional museum comprised of a nature sanctuary, performance venues, along with indoor and outdoor art exhibition areas. According to its website, "Wave Hill is a museum without walls with a living collection of more than 4,000 varieties of trees, shrubs, vines, and herbaceous plants.' Its 28 acre site hosts formal gardens, an 8 acre woodland, greenhouses, a conservatory, and multi-use indoor spaces.

What is Botanical Art?

What is Botanical Art?

Imagine being able to paint every part of a living thing with incredible, microscopic detail, with every flick of a brush bringing the vibrancy of a petal to life?

Botanical illustration does just that. It is one of the most specific, and vital artforms that plays a major part in botanical discovery.

Every painting, or plate, that a trained botanical artist creates becomes the visual definition of its subject.

At Kew, this plate becomes cemented in history as part of our 200,000-strong botanical illustrative archive. This is a scientific tradition that dates back centuries.

Botanical Illustration is Becoming Endangered, but the Job is Essential

Botanical Illustration is Becoming Endangered, but the Job is Essential

She doesn’t spend much time with this vista; as the Smithsonian’s botanical illustrator, her gaze is on plants, dried specimens of dead plants, up close, and closer, under a microscope. Sometimes she hydrates stems and flower parts, coaxing zombie life into them. She can become so absorbed in the structures that four or five hours will pass without her realizing that the sun has long set behind the Washington Monument.