(Note to all: this is the third blog entry in which I will be copying, over time, the 30 posts  I wrote to my 80 sponsors this past March as part of the "March Art Marathon",  a fundraising effort to support refugees and asylum-seekers in Central Vermont. The organization that sponsored this marathon is The Central Vermont Refugee Action Network (CVRAN) 

Each of these brief posts illustrate something of the processes I go through to create my large oil landscapes as well as delicate botanical watercolors. In these posts I also reflect on my life as a full-time painter: how I feel about having grown up in Vermont, how this environment shapes what I paint...  and who who inspires me.)

March 3, '24 ENCOUNTERING A GIANT AMONG BOTANICAL ARTISTS

Today’s post is about different part of my life in art, which is painting plants in watercolor.

Walking down Madison Avenue in NYC several years ago, I chanced upon an unobtrusive sign

announcing "Botanical Watercolors", and, after climbing a set of back stairs and being buzzed through

two doors, I arrived at the Arader Gallery, purveyor of rare and antique artwork.

I allowed as I was botanical watercolorist lured in by their signage, and was astonished to be allowed

unsupervised access to a little climate-controlled room filled with original watercolors by Pierre Joseph

Redouté, a French artist whose life span encompassed the latter half the eighteenth century and the first

half of the nineteenth, and whose output numbered 2,100 botanical portraits, most of them painted under

the auspices of Napoleon's Empress Josephine.

And there I was, standing among about 20 of these priceless paintings, informally laid about on tables

and leaning against the walls. I had stumbled into a trove of watercolors by the very artist whose work I

had studied and admired for years. Better yet, I wasn't seeing engraved prints but rather the originals, of

an order exponentially more lovely than the derivative engravings.

The delicacy of the watercolor washes and the subtlety of color combined with exquisite detail that I saw

in one particular painting of purple iris is burned into my memory as the gold standard for what I try to

achieve when I paint flowers.

I can't find online images of those Redouté originals. Maybe that's alright, though, since the memory of

those paintings is more powerful than anything I could see again.

On my watercolor table right now is a careful drawing of a purple iris, sketched from life during iris season

and then abandoned as often happens when Life intervenes. Completing the painting from my photo

reference won’t be half as much fun as working with the real blossom in front of me, but I'm pretty hungry

for flowers this time of year and will likely complete this painting during the Marathon.

Completing the painting from my photo reference won’t be half as much fun as working with the real blossom in front of me, but I'm pretty hungry for flowers this time of year and will likely complete this painting during the Marathon.

Below, one of my iris paintings (watercolor on light gray paper) which I dedicate to the spirit of Pierre Joseph Redouté and his botanical- artist descendants all over the world.

'Til tomorrow,

Susan