STORY BEHIND THE ART OF MITSUKO SCHULTZ

19th Annual International

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

Hibiscus

Hibiscus rosa-sinensis

While thinking about my next subject to paint, I saw a hibiscus flower that was blooming on my balcony and I felt like the Hibiscus flower was telling me "How about me?" In Southern California, where I live, this kind of hibiscus shrub (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis) is very common and is seemingly planted everywhere in residential gardens and in public spaces. Probably because the shrubs are so common here I never thought about painting hibiscus before. I originally bought my plant at my favorite grocery store a few years ago, to use for a shiny leaf study class, then afterwards it ended up on my balcony.

Hibiscus flowers die quickly and usually only last one day but new ones bloom continuously and many cultivars bloom almost all year and have many flowers at the same time. But these are big established shrubs. My hibiscus however, in its 6 inch pot, blooms only one at a time and succeeding blooms come very slowly, sometimes taking a week or more. This was very problematic for me to not have long access to a single bloom. From the beginning I thought that I could solve this problem by putting cut flowers in a plastic container and then keeping them in the fridge in order to preserve them for as long as possible. But then when the next and then successive flowers bloomed on my small plant, their petals would always go in a different direction from the original one that I had been trying to preserve and this change in orientation caused a lot of problems for me. Even though I take a lot of photos I still like to have real flowers in front of me when I paint.

Though I encountered many difficulties, I liked painting this hibiscus because it made me cheerful. In the future I will try to paint hibiscus again from different cultivars.

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Read more about this artist’s work: 16th Annual International