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There was Jan Salmon, an experienced artist, worrying for the first time in her life how scientists would judge the accuracy of her watercolour maple leaf.
“It was really scary,” she said Thursday. “I thought: oh my goodness, have I really represented it accurately? And right to the very end I wasn’t sure.”
And there was Jennifer Doubt, curator of botany at the Canadian Museum of Nature, judging art.
“Launching art shows is a pretty rare pleasure for a botatist,” she said. “It’s also not every day that a botanist gets to be part of an art jury.”
Two solitudes, art and science. But they meet in an exhibit of 48 paintings, drawings and other works at the museum, launching Thursday and aptly called Art of the Plant.
A new national exhibition of botanical art opens at Canadian Museum of Nature, May 10, 2018. It is called Art of the Plant.
The museum invited 22 artists with established reputations in portraying plants, and at the same time ran a competition for other artists. The competition narrowed down more than 150 entries to 26 winners.
The resulting 48 pieces — all native Canadian species — are on display on the bare stone walls of the museum’s basement-level gallery.
While each work was required to be rigidly faithful to reality, there was scope for the artists to choose what to show, and how.
There’s a Douglas fir — these are enormous trees — shown only as a single twig with a cone clinging to its tip.
A white pine done in charcoal shows more twigs and wispy needles that even look soft.
An oak is shown in the magic moment when the acorn is split open and a rootlet is digging into the earth.
All the works show enormous detail. Painting whole trees “is labour-intensive work, so you will get people working in smaller scale, particularly in the watercolour where it takes a long time to layer the colours,” Salmon said.
A new national exhibition of botanical art opens at Canadian Museum of Nature, May 10, 2018. It is called Art of the Plant.
She chose a single maple leaf, something you would think is easy in fall, but it wasn’t so.
“I don’t know if you remember but the leaves didn’t turn colour for a long, long time, so I kept waiting for the perfect leaf to show up,” she said. And it did in time, all yellow and orange and cheerful.
For Doubt, one surprise was the number of plants painted as they were wilted or dying.
There’s plenty of colour, certainly — orchids and sumac and bright mountain ash berries — but also a fair share of fall browns and greys. A hawthorn branch, for instance, has withered brown leaves; and even the clumps of brilliant purple satinflower from British Columbia have spent flowers along with the new blooms.
There’s an eastern cottonwood branch with dry leaves as well; many in Ottawa will remember the towering and ancient cottonwood at the north of Rochester Street that was cut down this spring.
“It’s hard not to go out in the fall, as an artist, and draw something or paint something,” Salmon said.
The show runs until Oct. 14 and is included in the regular admission price.
It is one of 25 exhibits by different countries, each showcasing that country’s plants and artists, led by the American Society of Botanical Artists.
tspears@postmedia.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
“It was really scary,” she said Thursday. “I thought: oh my goodness, have I really represented it accurately? And right to the very end I wasn’t sure.”
And there was Jennifer Doubt, curator of botany at the Canadian Museum of Nature, judging art.
“Launching art shows is a pretty rare pleasure for a botatist,” she said. “It’s also not every day that a botanist gets to be part of an art jury.”
Two solitudes, art and science. But they meet in an exhibit of 48 paintings, drawings and other works at the museum, launching Thursday and aptly called Art of the Plant.
A new national exhibition of botanical art opens at Canadian Museum of Nature, May 10, 2018. It is called Art of the Plant.
The museum invited 22 artists with established reputations in portraying plants, and at the same time ran a competition for other artists. The competition narrowed down more than 150 entries to 26 winners.
The resulting 48 pieces — all native Canadian species — are on display on the bare stone walls of the museum’s basement-level gallery.
While each work was required to be rigidly faithful to reality, there was scope for the artists to choose what to show, and how.
There’s a Douglas fir — these are enormous trees — shown only as a single twig with a cone clinging to its tip.
A white pine done in charcoal shows more twigs and wispy needles that even look soft.
An oak is shown in the magic moment when the acorn is split open and a rootlet is digging into the earth.
All the works show enormous detail. Painting whole trees “is labour-intensive work, so you will get people working in smaller scale, particularly in the watercolour where it takes a long time to layer the colours,” Salmon said.
A new national exhibition of botanical art opens at Canadian Museum of Nature, May 10, 2018. It is called Art of the Plant.
She chose a single maple leaf, something you would think is easy in fall, but it wasn’t so.
“I don’t know if you remember but the leaves didn’t turn colour for a long, long time, so I kept waiting for the perfect leaf to show up,” she said. And it did in time, all yellow and orange and cheerful.
For Doubt, one surprise was the number of plants painted as they were wilted or dying.
There’s plenty of colour, certainly — orchids and sumac and bright mountain ash berries — but also a fair share of fall browns and greys. A hawthorn branch, for instance, has withered brown leaves; and even the clumps of brilliant purple satinflower from British Columbia have spent flowers along with the new blooms.
There’s an eastern cottonwood branch with dry leaves as well; many in Ottawa will remember the towering and ancient cottonwood at the north of Rochester Street that was cut down this spring.
“It’s hard not to go out in the fall, as an artist, and draw something or paint something,” Salmon said.
The show runs until Oct. 14 and is included in the regular admission price.
It is one of 25 exhibits by different countries, each showcasing that country’s plants and artists, led by the American Society of Botanical Artists.
tspears@postmedia.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
