Artist Statement - Botany Series
I’ve always been a walker. That, and a bit of a hoarder. I can’t walk anywhere without coming home with pockets filled with rocks, a handful of seed pods or interesting sticks, and maybe a dead bug or two. Goethe purportedly observed, “You really do not see a plant until you draw it.” And so, the “walk” continues in my studio, where I draw and paint and make mixed media pieces with collected natural objects.
Recently this collection expanded to include over 250 deaccessioned or donated herbarium samples, provided by the staff of the Kathryn Kalmbach Vascular Plant Herbarium at Denver Botanic Gardens as part of a 2022 artist residency. Herbarium specimens are a way of making the ephemeral permanent, filed as part of a genetic library telling a scientific story. But that’s not the only story a plant can tell.
Civilizations throughout time have imbued plants with symbolic meaning and, in some cases, magical powers. Many of the earliest written records concern the study of botany: categorizing plants, studying their physical characteristics, and cataloging the effects they induce on mind and body. As such, plants were attributed with metaphysical powers and came to represent abstract ideas or qualities.
Rescued from the trash, repurposed herbarium samples now tell multiple stories. I work directly on the surface of the mounting paper, drawing and painting around the selected specimen. The concept is always inspired by the plant, voicing a narrative that speaks to culturally-applied meaning, symbolism, or scientific understanding.
The Botany Series illustrates a marriage of the objective and subjective, the fanciful and the factual. To paraphrase author Jonny Diamond, a successful piece is “defined as much by its tangents as its destinations – by its opportunities for noticing.” My goal is to keep noticing. And to make artwork that helps others notice as well.