STORY BEHIND THE ART OF MARGARET FARR

19th Annual International

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

Native Woodland Berries: common greenbrier, beautyberry, winterberry

Smilax rotundifolia,Callicarpa americana, Ilex verticillata

Painting berries is among my favorite things to do. As spring is to bloom, fall is to berries - an integral part of the sensory landscape. But to pick a strand is to acknowledge a commitment of time and energy for the long haul. It is necessary to enter the world of each individual orb - which in my case, means scrubbing, scratching, sanding, washing, and rewashing within a little walled universe until the translucence, or dullness, or waxiness - or whatever - emerges. Hopefully, in the round.

I spent a couple of seasons "collecting" for a series of Virginia woodland natives. (There is a companion piece of Euonymus, Red cedar and Holly.) The horse brier, as lovely as it is, is a wildly invasive strangler of my hollies and mountain laurels, so I do not hold it in much esteem. The winterberry, I have located in only one place in the wild: in a woods visible from a country lane near the North Fork of the Shenandoah. Sufficiently rare to inspire the thrill of the chase, it is a lovely sight in the dead of winter. The beautyberry, I have never found in the wild, but it is easily grown in the domestic garden in sun or shade, and deer don't bother with it. Allow plenty of room for it to grow to its four or five feet in width.

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Read more about this artist’s work: 18th Annual International