STORY BEHIND THE ART OF ROBERT MCNEILL

17th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists at The Horticultural Society of New York

Korean Fir

Abies koreana ‘Carron’

 My interest in trees developed during my youth when exploring local woodlands, enjoying their complex structures, infinite textural details, sounds and smells and their interaction with light.

I am fortunate to have had this particular slow growing tree specimen in my garden for the past twenty five years, and have nurtured it and observed it from when it was only eighteen inches high. It is now over fifteen feet in height and approximately eleven feet wide, its lower branches covering and protecting a multitude of new saplings. It is rather like an old friend whose company you can enjoy without the need for conversation.

Since the tree started to produce its amazing blue cones some ten years ago, it was always my intention to paint them, and try to capture their colour, dynamic form and structure, including the Fibonacci spirals of the scale bracts and leaves. My opportunity arose not long after l had taken early retirement from a full time art and design teaching career, almost three years ago. This allowed me to focus on my newly chosen career path of becoming a full time botanical artist.

Throughout my teaching career, my artwork had been abstract. My interest in abstract art was fuelled by a sense of freedom that abstraction gave to me during the creative process. As a postgraduate student studying at Edinburgh College of Art during the late seventies, l was very interested in producing paintings which were devoid of representational subject matter, allowing the spectator to focus upon the colour, and to experience its interaction with light. The interplay of light is very important in all of my work because I consider it is the means by which we visually engage with the subject and interpret what we are looking at. With botanical painting, I still have the colour and the light elements, with the little additional problem of a plant form!

My first attempt at botanical painting in watercolour was a dried Strelitzia reginae. The Abies koreana was my second. From the start of this work l wanted to realise the potential of light playing across the subject.

Having searched the lower branches of the tree, l found a segment to cut and take into the studio, l then set about my process which always begins with a rigorous objective visual enquiry, rotating the subject through three hundred and sixty degrees to ascertain exactly the compositional elements that convey its essence and dynamic nature

.

I began recording it as a linear drawing using a 0.3 mechanical pencil with a 2H lead, at around three times its actual size, before applying the watercolour. I mainly used a very time consuming dry brush technique over small areas of watercolour wash, on Fabriano Artistico 300lb hot pressed paper, which I chose as it does not require to be stretched.

I hope that my new found passion conveys to the spectator the visual experience that l have enjoyed and attempted to capture in my painting.

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