STORY BEHIND THE ART OF LESLEY RANDALL
17th Annual International
American Society of Botanical Artists at the Horticultural Society of New York
Ma’o hau hele
Hibiscus brackenridgei
I have this plant growing in my backyard. I selected this species for a few reasons. It is an endangered plant. It happens to be the state flower of Hawaii; I lived in Hawaii after I graduated from college, and I have maintained an interest in its unique flora. And this species has a particular hold on me because I got the seeds from my father who is a botanist. He collected the seeds back in the early 1980’s and gave me four about 10 years ago when I lived in northern California. I had two of the seeds germinate and grow into healthy plants (carefully nurtured through every winter) but they never flowered. My father figured the day length cues were wrong…sure enough when I moved to San Diego, bringing my plants with me, they finally flowered!
My piece is in the traditional botanical illustration layout and completed in pen and ink. Although my emphasis is on botanical accuracy, I attempt to create an attractive, interesting art piece as well.
I hope people will take time to look at the details of the plant parts. These small characters are often times what make a plant unique.
The main challenge with this species is that the flowers last only a day and I am not a fast sketcher!
I have an ongoing personal project to illustrate as many genera of the Malvaceae as I can find live specimens for…this has become a potentially much larger body of work now that the Sterculiaceae and Bombacaceae have been lumped into Malvaceae! There are over 200 genera, but I am only drawing living specimens I have found and I have no set time frame or number of genera to draw per year, so it is a “do as I can and as I am inspired” sort of project. Since I work full time, I am off to a slow start! I have maybe 15 completed at this point, so a long way to go, but it is a project I am doing for myself, with no particular purpose other than I enjoy learning about the different genera in the family.
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