botanizing & drawing

Botany has taught me to recognize the intelligence of plants; their spatial movement following light, gravity, water, the intricate design of their reproductive mechanisms, how they coexist in community. The wonder expands as I continue to learn. How a transverse section of a plant ovary, mimic formations of sound vibrating grains of sand on a membrane  as in cymatics. The Blashka brothers’ glass flowers and seeds first seen at Harvard’s Peabody Museum: magnified and vitrified specimens continue to inspire. I like this family of artisans aim to reproduce the unspoken sense of wonder in each work that I complete.

The act of painting a plant is one of quiet observation; taking time to sense its habits and patterns of growth. I understand a plant with a gesture of my brush, which becomes more portrait than scientific document, yet exists in parallel. The painting documents time and place, seasonality. Is the plant currently in a stage of budding out, setting fruit or withering in cold, from insects or disease? Each stage is a period of magic transformation on a cellular level that we see with light moving through our optical nerve, sensing the vibration of the varied spectrum of greens. How does what an artist creates correlate to how a scientist works? I grapple to understand. My work and my questions, are not unlike all those that came before me; beginning with the initial step of wonder. The second step, to observe. The third step is less visible, it is pulling thread, interweaving what we see before us with things we have learned or read.