STORY BEHIND THE ART OF KEIKO NIBU TARVER
18th Annual International
American Society of Botanical Artists at The Horticultural Society of New York
Horse Chestnut
Aesculus hippocastanum
On a spring day when I was leaving the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), I was surprised to see the ground covered with snow. Coming closer, I saw that it was not snow. Instead it was a carpet of small white flowers with a nice scent. The flowers were falling from a big, tall tree above with big leaves like a fan of tengu, which is a Japanese mythological creature with a long nose and the ability to fly with a fan. I had never seen a tree like that before in Japan. I researched that tree and learned it was a horse-chestnut, Aesculus hippocastanum. The French refer to it as a marronnier. I also learned that another member of the same genus, Aesculus turbinata, grows natively in Japan. The common name for A. turbinata is Japanese horse-chestnut or tochinoki in Japanese. The tochinoki bears fruit, but, unlike the horse-chestnut, it has no prickles. Although I had heard of tochinoki, I was not familiar with that tree, because it grows in northern Japan, but not commonly in western Japan where I lived.
One fall day, I was walking by that same horse-chestnut tree just after enjoying my favorite paintings by Cezanne at the PMA, and my eyes were arrested by a pile of fallen leaves. The color palette of those leaves was the same as Cezanne’s palette of landscape paintings: green, brown and yellow ocher. I was very attracted to the leaves as a subject to paint, and gathered several on the ground along with several fruits with prickles.
From the beginning, I had one composition in mind: a big leaf painted in watercolor and several fruits drawn in graphite at the bottom. I started sketching immediately after I returned home, putting aside other ongoing paintings. The leaf has seven leaflets with fine serrations, so it took several days to sketch. I changed the water of the container every day, put the leaf on a wet paper towel while I drew and stored it in a refrigerator when I was not drawing. Fortunately, it kept its shape and colors while I painted several layers of wash to create the basic colors of the leaf. To build up the color and details after the leaf faded, I referred to sketches, tonal studies, and images which I took while sketching.
I wanted to express the vitality of the green parts and the crispiness of the brown parts of the leaf. So I was very careful to express the light and texture, especially the delicate to bold ridges and valleys. For the greens, I chose Permanent Orange (PO 62) and Cupric Green Deep (PG 7), and I successfully created a variety of greens using these two pigments. I added Burnt Sienna (PBr 7) to green for the shadow areas. As for browns, I used Burnt Sienna and Cupric Green Deep, and for yellows, Hansa Yellow Medium (PY 97), Burnt Sienna and Cupric Green Deep.
It was fun to draw the fruits using graphite. I had just completed my first workshop on graphite drawing at the 2014 ASBA Conference in Denver. It was tough to express the prickles, especially the prickles pointed towards me.
When I visited Fukuoka, my hometown in Japan, this past spring, I was surprised to find in the center of the city several allées of red horse-chestnut, Aesculus x carnea, a hybrid of horse-chestnut and red buckeye. I don't know if they were there when I lived there; I should have asked the city government. Anyway, I was pleased to see healthy red horse-chestnut trees with beautiful flowers in my hometown.
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