WAYS OF SEEING - a visit to dear ada

       In the previous post I referred to the fact there are a great many approaches to Botanical subject matter in the Visual Arts. In the field of Scientific Botanical Illustration there is and no doubt always will be variation and invention, even in this most classical of arenas.
Ways of seeing indeed!
I thought I would highlight the curious and imagination directions of some artists working with botanical subjects in this post. However, I am going to start with several simple drawings from the children who came to my studio last year by way of introduction to / immersion in the multi-dimensional world where art meets botany.

The first work is by 7 year old Tom - perhaps worth clicking to enlarge this image - Tom was asked to draw something he liked and he jumped up and ran to the garden and came back with these camellias and nasturtium and a shell. I was intrigued to observe the careful layout of items that preoccupied him for a time then the extraordinary series of little texta images he created on the top right hand side of the page. He was totally engaged and only at the end did he look up, grow concerned and proceed to apologise for the smallness of the drawings, not that I was bothered by this. When it was time to go home he carefully carried the entire arrangement with drawing home as is here - his mother realising it was quite precious to him made sure it arrived home safely.
This entire procedure really fascinated me and it struck me that there was something quite powerful in this ritual that all of us could learn from. To see the deep absorbtion and the importance of composition, the artfulness in that alone was affecting.

Here in 12 year old Phoebe's work she collected leaves outside then observed and recorded the unique colours and features with care, painting each individually in a small notebook before the final invention - pasting them on a single stalk. On the one hand a simple process, but in another way, I saw her really take her time to appreciate the uniqueness of what she was looking at ... and I liked the whimsical and perhaps nonsensical twist at the end. It effectively draws attention to the uniqueness of each -  a curious way of completing her work.


Now I am taking you to the weblog Dear Ada (click on title to open) for a quick viewing of artists listed under botanical - garden in her categories. I would like to give the links to each individual artist here but that would take hours... so do visit the Dear Ada botanical link I have provided above and when you are free to trawl take a look at the links to the various artists. Apologies for not providing the details for wach artist here. The list starts with the extraordinarily talented Australian artist Fiona Hall and takes you to different parts of the globe, mediums and processes and styles of working. I hope you are intrigued and delighted as much as I was to survey the enormous variety in ways of seeing.


1. Fiona Hall



2. Ruth Van Haren Noman



3. Ellen Goldschmidt



4. Qiang Huang



5. Bill Beckley

6.  John Baird

7. Sonnenschein Eliezer

8. Neil Jones

9. David Hockney

10. Hugo Guinness

11. Not Known or identified

12.  Joyce Tennyson

13. Dam and Karislund Glas

14.  Maarten Kolk

15.  Linda Broadfoot

16. Malin Bjorklund

17. Scrapbook Floriegium

18. Daniel Williams



19.  Pamela Di Mauro

20.  Benjamin Long

21.  Dirk Mueggenburg



22. Gustav Oskar Andersson malme



23.  David Pearson

24. Karl Blossfeldt



25. Olga Seem



26.alain gerard clement



27.  Chris Hellman



28. Ric Heitzman



29. Becky Suss



30.  Alice Stevenson



31. Judy Pfaff



32. Julie Blyfield



33.  Allan Ballie



34. Nancy Blum



35. Anna Atkins



36.  Rudolf Blaschka



37. Camilla Penti



38. Jennifer Scott



39. John Buck



40.  Ernest Ciavano 



41.Ninagawa Mika

 I think you will agree this is an extraordinary range of works... and yet just the tip of the iceberg so to speak.  Thanks to Dear Ada for the peek into this fabulous array of wonderful artists and their work.