STORY BEHIND THE ART OF JULIA TRICKEY

19th Annual International

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

Leaves from Bath Botanical Gardens

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This watercolour painting was originally painted for a local exhibition to be held in the beautiful English city of Bath where I live and work. For one of the Bath Society of Botanical Artists’ annual exhibitions we decided to make the focus of the paintings Bath’s small botanical gardens. At the time I was doing a lot of teaching (and still am!) so couldn’t commit to long stretches of painting. One of my favourite subjects at the time was leaves of all shapes, sizes and textures. So, inspired by other artists who had depicted collections of botanical subjects in one composition, I decided to collect a selection of leaves from plants, shrubs and trees in the garden as and when I had the time to paint. In this way I could collect a leaf and spend a morning, afternoon or day adding it to the composition as time allowed. If I then didn’t have time to paint the next leaf for a couple of weeks it wouldn’t matter.

I didn’t plan the composition from the outset, as I would have had to choose all the leaves in advance and this would slow the whole process down. However, I did have some guidelines in mind as the painting progressed. These guidelines included an idea of how far apart I intended to place each leaf and the need to be mindful of evenly distributing certain colours such as reds across the page. I also like the idea of repeating some of the smallest leaves to give a sense of intentional design to the painting. 

Being left handed, I started in the bottom right hand corner with the yellow Ginkgo leaf and worked my way across and up the page. Each time I visited the Gardens I would pick up a few leaves and then lay them on a piece of acetate over the work in progress to see where they might fit. It took me around nine months to fill the full size sheet of watercolour paper with the main leaves. Then I went back and filled any holes with smaller leaves. I have never spent quite so long on a single painting! Fortunately, I was pleased with the end result.

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Read more about this artist’s work: Weird, Wild and Wonderful