The dozens of new friends who meet with me and buy my botanical art for their homes and workplaces and for their friends share with me a love of nature and the fun that we can have contemplating the outdoors one leaf at a time. I’m surprised by the number of people who share that they regularly collect and press plants just for the joy of it. I hope I inspire them to take it a step further.
“I believe that a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars.” I have used this quote before and you will see it again if you follow my posts. It is what this work is about. When I walk through my garden to collect plants for these pieces, I look as closely at the weeds as I do to the other plants I selected so carefully for their unusual foliage. All of it, including the twisted leaves or beetle-nibbled would-be star of the garden has a place.
My friends in and around Stonington can see some of my pieces at Frills Gallery in Watch Hill. (It’s the white building with a front porch as you first enter town) This is a companion piece to one I made recently. The colors have changed and I’ve used different plants — fringed Bleeding Heart for the ‘tall trees’ and ferns and a Foam Flower leaf for the underbrush. A crazy little Bellflower hugs the beach.
I love what these undulating lines do to the look of the foliage I use. In previous versions of this basic design I’ve used feathery ferns and, in one case nothing but very tiny individual fronds. While this piece uses some ordinary ferns to balance the composition, the real stars of the show are the bold Sensitive Fern at the bottom center and individual leaf clusters from my Fringed Bleeding Heart.
After making the larger version of this seafaring image, I changed a few details and then re-cropped it for a smaller mat. For the smaller piece I also used smaller-scale foliage and added a touch of pastel on the Yellow Archangel at the bottom of the image while leaving the same foliage in its natural state above. Swapping out the standard Bleeding Heart leaf for a smaller Fringed Bleeding Heart worked well.
Both of these are now listed in my Etsy shop.
For this series of three small pieces, I reversed and alternated pairs of undulating colors to provide interest and contrast for some lovely ferns and well-shaped small leaves. I keep searching for new ways to use color as well as color shading and juxtaposition to enhance my plants. Some experiments work and some don’t. These three survived the cut and landed in my Etsy shop. Weather permitting they’ll be with me in Providence on Saturday.
Even though I created it, this hill of little ferns and strange trees makes me want to see what’s on the other side. I’m busy replenishing my Etsy inventory after last Saturday’s trip to the Artisan’s Market at Lippett Park in Providence. Will miss next week’s market and return on June 29th.
My stock of interesting pressed foliage is growing so fast it’s hard to know what to play with next.
I use Ralph Waldo Emerson quotations (and those of other wise men and women) in many of my botanical pieces. A lovely woman I met today at the Providence Artisan’s Market suggested I use this one from the great Massachusetts sage. While enhancing it with botanicals may prove a challenge — the quote is too long to repeat many times in a legible font — it brought tears to my eyes so it must happen!
“To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one’s self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived—this is to have succeeded.”
Here’s an example of literature as foundation for my work:
A while back I made one of these little dioramas that looks to me like a photograph I might have taken back in my landscape painting days. The bottom is layered, as nature would be with growth including dill and a sprig of new-growth andromeda — as nature would not be, but you get the idea. The central focus is on newly unfurled spring ferns. There are overhanging ‘branches’ of bleeding heart and what sky doesn’t need an etoile? Now that I’ve put this little piece together, I’m regretting that I harvested so few ferns at this stage of development. I love the sparseness of them but I guess I’ll have to wait until next spring to reap the benefits of that experience. All varieties of my ferns are now either fully open and robust or getting there fast.
This will probably be the last new piece to be packed up and headed to the Providence Artisan’s Market at Lippett Park this Saturday. The experts tell us the weather will be perfect!
For this simple composition of Fringed Bleeding Heart, Fern, and Sweet Woodruff, I created the illusion of a violet mat which is actually a graphic composed of a simple octagon filled with color and surrounded by lines of varying widths and shades.
Although the lovely flowers on my Bleeding Heart are mostly gone, I can work with the foliage for the whole season as long as I harvest judiciously.
My Stonington Garden 
