Dan's Papers - October 3, 2008

The art of botanical illustration is alive and well and on view in the small gallery that John Brancati has dedicated to prints and photography in his East Hampton bookstore, East End Books, located on The Circle. The store will exhibit prints from the recently published edition of botanical artists' renderings entitled Today's Botanical Artists by Cora Marcus and Libby Kyer at an opening on Saturday, Oct. 11 at 5:30 p.m.

The giclee prints will be reproductions of illustrations in the book. The watercolors, colored pencil drawings, oil paintings and a few acrylics that border on photorealism are evidence that the centuries old tradition of botanical illustration is flourishing in the age of high-resolution digital photography.

Brancati is attracted to beautifully illustrated coffee table books and photography. He worked with Rissoli for 32 years, building their reputation for beautiful publications and is now pursuing some of his own passions for nature photography and botanical prints at his own store. Currently, he's showing the flower and shell photos of Nina Rumbagh and the landscapes of North Fork photographer Jake Rajs in large folios. He has always loved botanical books and floralegiums from the 1700s and 1800s and the use of floral treatments in design motifs like art nouveau, but he was not aware that the tradition of botanical illustration was being practiced today in a contemporary way until he saw Today's Botanical Artists.

And the work by the varied artists is gorgeous. Brancati is partial to the rendering of "Anemones" (right) by Rose Tillicano, who works in a traditional style that is elegant and well arranged across the paper. I prefer her white amaryllis, however, and was also taken by Margaret Best's "Quercus Robur," which clearly indicates that she also has been influenced by antique botanical prints.

What makes the work in the book outstanding to Brancati is the evidence of the skill the artists have and the "tradition of craftsmanship, like the way they drew in the Renaissance, and that people can make a living of it amazes me," particularly against the back drop of modern times, where we still see a great deal of abstract expressionism's influence. Not everyone can draw like this, rendering leaves and fruit in such incredible realistic detail. He compares them to the great Renaissance masters who sought for realism against formalism. Yet the original purpose of botanical artwork was for identification of individual plant species considered valuable as food, medicine or ornamental additions to the landscape.

"They are incredible masters," Brancati said of the artists, and it is true. Daylilies seem to jump from the page. One can examine the flowers, fruit and saprophytic air plant of my favorite vegetable, Theobroma cacao, or the chocolate tree, in Dianne McElwain's watercolor. Karen Johnson's pencil sketches of Milkweed gone to seed and Sylphium leaves that have dried up and curled inward define mastery of the art of draftsmanship. Another pencil sketch of walnuts looks like a study done by one of the Dutch masters in preparation for a still life. Karen Johnson's irises are rich, luminous and velvety, the way they are on a spring day. It's easy to see why botanical illustrations have become prized collectors items over the centuries.

But modernism has crept into this old art form. Photorealism has had its own lasting affect. Rhonda Nass's "Vitis" is almost indistinguishable from a photograph, as is Patricia Savage's oil painting of a Lady Slipper. The Swamp lantern watercolor, by Sherry Mitchell, shows the exquisite detail of a plant growing up through the debris of the forest floor and glowing in the golden brilliance of early spring sunshine.

There is some abstract influence evident among the flowers and foliage of Jessica Tcherepnine. This may have to do with how she has chosen to light her subjects from the side, an unusual technique for botanical illustration that perhaps she borrowed from a still life. Michael Maskarenic works with digital photos that he then manipulates on his computer to create more a graphic, yet still recognizable, print that is an extrapolation of Ginko, a tree that already has a very geometrically shaped leaf.

Also, atypical of botanical illustration is the fading form of a plant. Specimens were picked in their prime and faithfully copied in all their glory, but here we have leaves curling and brown, depicted in their final late autumn form, before crumbling to dust in Bonnie Anthony's "Quercus gambelli."

If I had to look at only one page of the book, though, it would be Carol Hamilton's six-paneled screen of an old quince tree. She may not be the virtuoso among masters when it comes to rendering skill, but her placement across the six views reminds me of a combination of Japanese plum trees and Van Gogh's peach trees.

Reseed the lawn! Aerating and a heavy over seeding are the best defenses that organic lawns have against the encroachment of other weeds. Once it sprouts, after two or three weeks fertilize with dry roots or a liquid feed of any other kelp-based rooting hormone to help it get established. Just keep the new fertilizer laws in mind when you do.