I’ve had the privilege of participating in two significant undertakings to document plants as part of well-organised conservation programs. I’ve just returned from a second visit to Copșa Mare (home of the Transylvania School of Botanical Art) in Transylvania,...
Few flowers say “late summer” quite like Rudbeckia Hirta Prairie Sun, with its velvety brown-black cone and sunburst of golden petals. It’s a favorite subject for botanical artists — bold, structurally satisfying, and endlessly forgiving of imperfect...
Copyright infringement is often framed as something that happens on the murky edges of the internet — anonymous accounts, overseas print-on-demand shops, faceless content farms. So it can come as a shock when the infringer turns out to be a respected institution: an...
Recently, a fellow botanical artist sent me a quote she found on social media. It’s expressed as a reminder to a potential buyer of art as to what they are really buying. “When you buy a piece of art from an artist, you are buying hundreds of hours of failures...
As many artists who have studied with me over the years know, I have long been fascinated by Leonardo da Vinci’s seamless connection between science and art. My own interest is no doubt heightened by a shared love of geometric forms—especially the circle and the...
Recently, while scrolling through Instagram, I came across an artist mixing oil paints on a palette with a palette knife. He had three blobs of pigment: PG7 Phthalocyanine Green, PR122 Quinacridone Magenta, and PW6 White. He began blending some of the Quinacridone...
