Books, Artists and Gardens

 

' Like the musician, the painter, the poet and the rest, the true lover of flower is born not made' Celia Thaxter

 

I have had a busy month of entering juried shows, being part of a local Garden Art show in a gallery, preparing for a talk on sketchbooks and designing a botanical tattoo.  Much of my latest work in in progress so lacking something to show you this month I thought I would share something close to my heart, gardens and artists.

Botanical art and gardens go together of course. Many botanical artists you will talk with all have a love of gardens and often paint plants that they have grown. I know when I am stuck for inspiration I wander around my local garden center until a particular plant 'waves' to me. I love the idea though that sometimes people developed gardens with the idea of bringing together creative energy. The thought of many talented people all inspired in the same place, ideas bouncing off one another is fascinating.
There have been so many famous gardens in history linked to artists we all know and love but I am especially interested in women who created artistic gardens.

I have been recently reading a wonderful book 'The Artist's Garden' edited by Anna O'Marley. Each chapter is fascinating but Chapter 3 Home of the Hummingbird stuck with me. Poets and artists have always drawn to one another and the chapter is about the poet and artist, Celia Laighton Thaxter and her friend, the artist Childe Hassam. I have long been a fan of Hassam's romantic work but knew nothing about him. Celia was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1835. From the age of 4 she grew up on the magical Isles of Shoals where her father was a lighthouse keeper. She married at 16, had 3 children and unhappy in her marriage moved with her children to become the innkeeper at Appledore House, a large tourist hotel on the island. When her parents died she moved into their cottage and cultivated an old fashioned garden of heirloom flowers. The garden and her salon became a retreat for the gathering of writers and artist friends. There were gatherings of writers such as Nathanial Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, musicians William Mason and John Paine and artists William Morris, J. Appleton Brown and of course Childe Hassam. Hassam and Celia worked together on the book 'An Island Garden' published just before her death in 1894. Sadly in 1886 a large fire destroyed the hotel, cottage, garden bringing the artistic revelries to an end.

How wonderful those golden days must have been. I would have loved to have been a bee flitting around that garden listening to the conversation, watching Celia and Hassam sketching. Hassam did about 400 paintings of the island. All that inspiration and talent in one place. It sounds like the making of a film and it is!  In the trailer of Peter Randell's film on Celia's garden you will see her salon. Her garden has been now been recreated. One day I will go and visit.

Another lovely book I recently acquired is The Artist, The Cook & The Gardener by artist Maryjo Koch. Maryjo's work is vibrant and lovely and she likes to combine cooking, eating in the garden and painting. Her students get to enjoy it all, and I am sure it is really inspiring. A modern day artists retreat.

Recently someone approached me about doing classes in her lovely garden here on Whidbey Island in the summer and including afternoon tea. I am very tempted to do it even though I am not a good teacher. It would be worth it just for the tea,cake!

Back next month with some art work!

I wanna be just like you...

'I wanna be just like you. I wanna walk like you. And talk like you too' The Monkey Song.

I recently read a comment by a student of botanical art who said she was a great copyist of well known artists but she just couldn't find her own style. I thought it was a brave and honest admission. It is very easy to forget that we should be learning to understand techniques and tips and instead try earnestly to be like our favorite botanical crush.

For several years now I have dreamed to being the next Billy Showell, Fiona Strickland, Dianne Sutherland to name a few. The hours I have wasted trying to make my work look theirs and how dissatisfied I am when I fail. I recently read Jess Shepherds new Inky Leaves post and it was like being smacked in the head with a baseball bat minus the pain. A real wakeup call. Jess wrote about her own struggle with finding her style and how she has now moved on. And boy has she! www.Inkyleaves.blogspot.com

So my advice is to watch the videos, do the courses, admire the professionals, read the books and then step away. Put on your favorite music and just create. Children do it all of the time. We have just forgotten how.

Some of my new cards in the series 'From an Artists Sketchbook'

Stepping out of the box

I often notice that a lot of botanical artists seem quite shy to show their work. I also fit that picture.

I enjoy solitude and I love painting in my studio eerie perched above the garage, listening to music. Extremely nice but not so great if you want to promote your work. Sometimes my shyness, my uncertainty to believe in that people might like my paintings stops me progressing. I have to really push myself to move on.

A recent goal that I made myself do was to join a local art group who have a guest demonstrator every month. I needn’t have been nervous. The group were very kind and encouraging about my work which helped boost my confidence. I also enjoyed seeing the demoes of work that are nothing like mine. The group take part every year in a island art tour, something I have wanted to do for ages but somehow never did. Perhaps this year will be a first for me. 

And a contact made last year turned into a show this year. Last year I had approached a wonderful local printing company, Fine Balance Imaging, to get some scans done.  Nancy and Joe are a mother and son team who work in the most incredible building called Bayview Cash Store, part of a group of historical buildings. The light in this building is amazing, it’s got huge old beams and old iron work, all recycled. The printers have these huge machines and print on metal and fabric as well as traditional surfaces such as paper. Nancy is always so helpful and ready to listen to an artist’s woes J and to my delight invited me to be part of this years’ Gratitude Show. This is an annual show that Nancy & Joe put on for artists who have ordered prints from them. They show their gratitude by allowing any sales to go completely to the artist, what a wonderful gift! The prints I have in this show are the baby bok choy, willows, camellia & daphne, and September Treasures. I chose white for the framing as I felt it would suit most people's décor.

 

 

I also recently applied to a prestigious local gallery in a local town and to my delight I got accepted for the popular garden show that's put on there every April. The paintings the owner liked and settled on to show were the beets, pears and roses. She felt that the colors would pop against the white walls of her gallery. But botanical art and the watercolor technique were new to her so I had quite a bit of explaining to do. I found it difficult at first but warmed up to it when I realized she was genuinely interested.

 

 

My cards are still selling well at the Flower House Café and I have decided to continue with them. I will be introducing an Artists Sketchbook range, images that are little looser and more spontaneous, divided by color.

 

So already this is an exciting year. Just by making some small changes in my life I can feel doors opening and new opportunities coming in. I consider myself extremely lucky. Not only do I now have the time in my life to paint which gives me huge amounts of joy and centers me, but I get to meet wonderful people along the way who in turn help me to produce prints, sell my work etc.

 

I also intend to enter some exhibits and to attend more classes with botanical artists that I admire.

My focus for the moment is on the Turk’s Head Squash that I am finally finishing and I have a few sketches of spring flowers that I managed to squeeze in recently.

 

So remember to step out of your box from time to time, you never know where it may lead. What will you be working on this year?

 





 

 

 

 

Winter blues...

I live in Washington State and that means that winter here is mostly wet, wild and windy. Like many I suffer from the winter blues. Its very melancholy weather and still hard for me to get used to after 9 years. Everyone has their way of getting over it. Some sit in local wine bars, some plan their gardens, others work on their vacation plans.

During the days after Christmas and before the New Year I get over being low in spirits by clearing out my studio and planning for the year ahead. It's always so interesting to reflect over art work of the year, tidy up paints and reread botanical books. I unearth loads of cuttings and pieces of inspirations that I had forgotten about.

Some inspirations linger from the old year. I find I am still in love with pumpkins and have some waiting to be painted. My studio is so cold they have survived well. I still want to conquer using masking fluid and I really want to work on larger pieces of art that are part of themes. My work this year was too random, too spur of the moment.

 

 

I also need to go back and paint flowers. I have neglected blooms in favor of veggies for a while and I need to balance my work. One way I don't see the grey outside is to fill my studio with plants. I know that there are wonderful berries in the hedgerows but I want to see larger, lush bursts of color. So I will spend some time in my local garden center and florist store to see what treasures they for me. I don't always get around to painting the blooms but at least I am able to photograph them for another day. And that reminds me it's also time to reorganize my reference photos.

Then of course it's time to plan for 2016 and the shows and meetings I would like to attend. Usually I go to various sites like the American Society of Botanical Artists, www.asba-art.org and under Exhibitions in their menu bar I read up on lists of upcoming exhibits. Another useful site is www.onlinejuriedshows.com . This planning will give me a good idea of themes for the year.

Hopefully by the time I've worked on these projects the weather will have improved and the sun will be shining and the days will be getting longer. And suddenly 2015 is over and we can start our artwork anew. Happy New Year!

Serendipty

"The universe is always speaking to us...sending us little messages, causing coincidences and serendipities, reminding us to stop, to look around, to believe in something else, something more." Nancy Thayer

When I came to the end of my botanical distance learning course I felt quite lost. Where to go from here? So I knew how to study plants and how to portray them but where was I going to use this information and how was I going to grow it and share it?

One of my favorite assignments of the 27 month course was Working in the Field.

For my assignment I had chosen to study an area of land in a preservation area on Whidbey Island (where I live) called Ebey’s Landing comprising of 17,572 acres. Ebey’s Landing is unique in America. It is a Reserve that contains 3 prairies, historic farms & a preserved seaport town and is a National Park unit. It is where the first white man, Colonel Isaac Neff Ebey came to Whidbey Island in the 1850’s and before that was occupied by Coastal Salish Native Americans called the Skagit.

 

 

 

I discovered that 3 universities are responsible for studying the prairies and for keeping data. I went to meet up with a couple of the representatives to find out more and found that there are no actual drawings of plants on Ebey, only a herbarium, and a list of plants which I used to verify the plants that I found. Today 90% of the Reserve is privately owned and there are laws in place to protect the land. It is extremely beautiful and on one side there is the ocean, and saltmarsh plants and on the other side of the road are wetland marshes. My study took place on the beach on Keystone Spit looking out to Admiralty Bay. You can find out more about the reserve and see a map at www.nps.gov/ebla

I was spoilt for choice of plants as 235 have been documented in the area. I chose to study some of the main plants that dominated the landscape.

 

During working on my studies I found that people enjoyed my sketchbook pages as much as the finished pieces, and they also enjoyed reading my notes along side the drawings.

 

 

I strongly felt that I should continue with the plant studies and maybe combine them into a book but how to start? I put it on the back burner thinking maybe, one day.

 

Then a few weeks ago I attended the American Society of Botanical Artists (ASBA) annual conference in Miami. it was the first time I had attended the conference even though I had been a member for a couple of years. I was looking forward to learning more about the society and to also attending a couple of classes. Browsing through the itinerary I saw a session entitled Portfolio Sharing. Sounds good I thought and went along not sure what to expect. It was beyond my expectations.  Not only were there portfolios, amazing ongoing commission work of well known botanical artists, great opportunities to buy prints and cards but a table piled with books caught my eye. The 2 authors of the books turned out to be Heidi Snyder and Dorothy DePaulo and the books were copies of Wild in the City (Fauna & Flora of Colorado Urban Spaces), also available on Amazon. The artistic images were produced in colored pencil and also included reference photographs. It is a true labor of love and shows their passion for promoting the understanding of nature in urban spaces.

 

How was I to know that a giant arrow highlighting my artistic path was to hit me at that moment? Imagine my surprise when Heidi mentioned that she knew Whidbey Island and the Reserve well and had often visited. I tentatively mentioned my idea and her enthusiasm overwhelmed me. Of course, she said, you must do more studies and produce a book! I couldn't sleep that night for ideas racing through my mind. Since then Heidi's generosity has been amazing including being willing to help me understand the applying for grants procedure.

 

So how could I ignore this sign? I have decided to give it a go. I hope my project will appeal to both artists and conservationists and will help promote interest in the Reserve.

 

If you can't reach me in the studio you know where I will be for the next couple of years! I'll keep you updated on my progress.