STORY BEHIND THE ART OF FATIMA ZAGONEL

19th Annual International

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

Caladium

Caladium bicolor, Caladium hortulanum

I am always seeking Brazilian native plants to paint. I chose this subject because I love leaves, and these are extraordinary ones. I think leaves are a beautiful gift from nature that usually go unnoticed, as people tend to pay more attention to flowers. These particular leaves had always caught my attention, because they disappear in the winter and they come out in the summer in an uncountable number of patterns. Caladium has the most colorful leaves I´ve ever known and I feel cheerful when I look at these wonderful mixed colors shining and moving in nature. The leaves are big and vigorous and in each leaf you can find innumerous combinations of purple, white and green. The white flowers are a little shy in comparison to the luxury of the leaves, as they show some of the colors from the leaf in a very discreet way. I was waiting for an opportunity to paint them and in the summer of 2013 my sister brought me some from her beach house.

I think the biggest challenge in this illustration was to get two strong colors together without building a third color. In this composition, I tried to do a panel to demonstrate a few of the several patterns that this plant can show. For the first time I decided to use a different paper, a thicker one, Arches 600g, in order to avoid undulations on the board. I realized that with this paper it is necessary to use many more layers of watercolor than on Arches or Fabriano 300g. It was more time-demanding, but in the end the paper was perfect.

I tried a different approach with this painting. I used to illustrate in a very traditional way, following the trends of scientific botanical illustration. In this particular work, I decided to create a piece of botanical art, emphasizing the composition and the beauty of the subject, without neglecting its accuracy, but not including all the morphological information. I allowed myself more freedom to create a Caladium portrait, illustrating not only the native one but the cultivars too.

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