STORY BEHIND THE ART OF FATIMA ZAGONEL

16th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists and the Horticultural Society of New York

Mandacaru

Cereus jamacaru

In terms of choosing a subject to paint, first of all, I always look for native Brazilian plants to illustrate. Secondly, I love cactuses. I am a founding member of the Botanical Illustration Center of Paraná, and each year we produce a calendar on a different theme as an opportunity for members to publish their work and as a fundraiser; this year’s theme was medicinal plants. So I was looking for a cactus with medicinal properties and I chose Cereus jamacaru. The stems and roots have been used in traditional medicine in northern Brazil, for instance, the juice from the stems for bronchitis, scurvy and skin infections, and an infusion from the roots for kidney stones. While Cereus is very common in northern Brazil, it is not usually found here in the South where I live, and Brazil is almost as big a country as the United States, so finding a specimen for my work was not easy and I felt very lucky when I did.

I had seen a Cereus growing on a vacant land in front of a friend’s house here in Curitiba a few years ago, but high walls surrounded the terrain. I tried and tried to collect material from this specimen but finally gave up. Time passed, a large building was constructed there and I thought that the cactus was gone. However, at the end of the summer of 2012, this friend called to tell me that a Cereus was blooming in her neighbor’s garden. My friend’s neighbor had collected and planted some cuttings of the cactus when she saw it would be destroyed by the construction! Those cuttings had grown into such large plants that my friend could now see them peeking over the wall. Isn’t it amazing, just when I was looking for it? So, I think that in this case, it was the subject that chose me.

This cactus is a plant of great contrasts. It is a very large plant and can reach 8 meters high. From the stem, which is a tall, rough and spiny green tower, there suddenly emerges a bud. After a while, the most delicate white flower blooms to our delight, blooming only at night and gone at first sunlight. Then it quickly starts to form a plump, round, deep rose fruit. So I wanted to place more than one stem in the picture in order to show a flowering branch, an older one with a fruit, and also a very young one, all within the same view. And I wanted to paint it life size. All this was challenging! I had to go there many times in the very early morning, to take photos and some samples. And I had to climb a ladder because the flowering branches which I chose were at the very top.

In this work, I wanted to emphasize the strong contrast between the waxy, sturdy and heavy stems and the lightness of the flower that seems almost to be flying.

Another very important thing was the choice of the paper. I realized that for subjects like this, with large painted areas, I had to use thicker paper, like the 600gr Fabriano or Arches, so that it wouldn’t get wavy. And what about the bunch of stamens in the flower? They are absolutely white and I first hoped to be able to render them without the help of gouache, painting with a negative technique. But there were so many stamens that this became impossible. This was a little frustrating, but in the end, I think the gouache worked out well. The flower itself is white from the paper with just a little watercolor.

I think that any botanical subject represents a unique goal, offering a different shape, a different color, a new morphology to learn from, and a chance to “preserve” a plant. When this work was chosen for the exhibition at the New York Horticultural Society, it gained an even bigger meaning for me: I want to show the world the plants I live with. To paraphrase the Sinatra song, ”If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere”. I feel very proud to have my work in the show. 

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