It’s three o’clock in the morning sometime in April in the 1970’s, and Maryrose Wampler is sleeping soundly in a tent somewhere in a state park in southern Indiana.  She has an ax under her pillow, just in case…

Each year Marie Brezinski considers how to use her botanical art to create beautiful gifts for her friends.  In this blog, Marie shares her techniques and resources just in time for the holidays.

It is our pleasure to introduce three new NESBA board members, all of whom are talented women with so much to contribute to botanical art and our organization. 

I first thought they were just beautiful colors and forms found in many locations and did not realize how much there was to learn about lichen.

Carolyn Bensinger tells us about her experience studying lichen for her final Botanical art certificate program.

Twenty years ago, botanical art classes were launched by the Friends of Wellesley College Botanic Gardens (WCBG) and taught in the WCBG Visitors center. The program was defined as ‘bringing together fine art and scientific accuracy in an integrated course of study set in Wellesley College Botanic Gardens.’ Since then, we have created a certificate program in Botanical Art and Illustration and introduced many hundreds of artists to the exacting practice of recording the beauty and wonder of the natural world.

It’s hard to see a moss for what it really is. As part of an ecosystem, and in art, moss can seem like an afterthought—a sprig of parsley at the edge of an already appealing plate. But moss is so much more than harmless decoration.   If we look closely at mosses we can see their diversity and also their beauty. (Continued…)

Quite a few years ago, before I had the opportunity to study botanical illustration, I began collecting botanical prints to be framed as artwork for my home.  When I presented the prints to a local framer, they intentionally prepared a decorative mat in the style of English botanical art framing and included bands of marbled paper and colored lines as a method of embellishing the print.  At the time, I was unaware that this was a recognized technique for framing botanical art, and it was not until years later that I researched this framing technique.

It was the last in person botanical art class before Covid, but we didn’t know that then.  The assignment was trees.  Panic ensued.  Trees are majestic and I find it nearly impossible to figure out how to depict them with the accuracy and detail that I strive for in botanical drawing. (Continued…)

Many botanical artists took note of the beautiful United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) catalog of American fruits and nuts when it was published in 2021 by Atelier Editions. The catalog contains selections from the 7,500 watercolor paintings commissioned by USDA’s Division of Pomology from 1886 to 1942.  In addition to apples, which comprise over half of the USDA’s watercolor collection, it contains citrus, berries, melons, and drupes, even nuts, and it illuminated the work of  many female artists.

Because my final project in the Wellesley Friends Botanical Program is apples, I bought the book immediately. (Continued…)

As botanical artists, we continually search for inspiration to feed our creative endeavors. We don’t have to always search very far - within NESBA’s members we have so many talented artists