STORY BEHIND THE ART OF ANNIE PATTERSON

17th Annual International

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

Cardoon

Cynara cardunculus

In terms of selecting a subject to paint, I have a very new garden - it was a ploughed field just three years ago, so my choice was fairly limited! Plus I haven’t painted this subject before. I’d been watching this huge, animal like specimen that was leaning all over the vegetable bed. After strong winds, it fell right over and continued to grow towards the light. I waited until a stem reached a certain point with one beautiful opening flower with the leaves going over. It was an imperfect specimen allowed to do its thing, the result of lazy gardening! I hope viewers will appreciate that the imperfect can often look interesting.

The plant itself inspired the composition. I just had to select and move things where I wanted. The colour of the open flower was jewel-like and sang out from the silvery green foliage. It was a lovely subject to work on and I was able to make a lot of detailed drawings and play about with the composition. I painted the main flower first as I wanted to capture it at its freshest, most luminous stage. Getting it to look three dimensional was tricky. The twisting stems and leaves were beautiful but it was important for them not to compete with the flower head.

My work is very eclectic. I will ‘stalk’ a plant that I think will be interesting or I’ll grow something from seed and watch it develop. However I also enjoy the discipline of producing a series of paintings which require research so you really get to know the subject. I’m currently working on a collection of work featuring roses but they won’t be classical portraits, not after the rain and wind we’ve had this summer...

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