Messages From the Artist

There will be no apparent rhyme or reason to the order in which species of plants are painted, and so the same will follow with my prints. The choice to paint a particular plant is driven, mostly, by my aesthetic sensibility; what happens to catch my eye at any given time, so I will tend to jump around among the genera and species of carnivorous plants. I also plan to make paintings of orchids and various other cultivated and wild plants that will then, ultimately make their way into print form. Finally, I have begun experimenting making prints from watercolors and other works on paper that relate to my major work in acrylic. These are landscape, still life and abstract works and may be published as limited editions, so prices and availability will vary accordingly. Keep watching!

There are two distinct types of botanical paintings that I make:

1. A single plant in the middle of the image space with little or no hint of habitat,...a more traditional type of botanical illustration that strives to show the species in an ideal way, often blending a range of characteristics seen in the field. This type is a kind of portrait.

2. Single or multiple species and/or morphological variations within a suggestion of habitat.

This is simply a description of what I have found myself doing and is far from an imposed structure. If, along the way, I find something else working, then it will show itself.

For those of you unfamiliar with my botanical paintings, I focus on carnivorous plants because of a long time fascination with them that began when I was about 7 years old. Explaining why you like something seems to always become self referential, so I wont delve deeply into reasons, except to say that these plants separate themselves from their fellow plants in both a functional and visual way that I find compelling. My artistic talent compells me to make images of them, and to use draughtmanship skills that I tend to suppress in my landscape and still life pictures (for the sake of success with that type of painterly painting). I know that there are others out there like myself, who feel this obsessive need to have these plants around them, see them in the wild, and ultimately to protect them. I like to think that this response is natures way of sending a survival message.

While certainly this is a business venture, it is also a way for me to contribute to the general education of the public, who may not realize that these amazing and beautiful plants exist and are becoming increasingly threatened with extinction, primarily due to wetland habitat destruction. I hope that the day will not come when only photos, paintings, and potted specimens will be all thats left to see of these wonderful gems of the plant world.