STORY BEHIND THE ART OF JULIA TRICKEY

21st Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists at Wave Hill

Vintage Desiccated 'Texas Flame' Tulip

Tulipa 'Texas Flame'

My painting of a desiccated tulip reflects a favorite subject of mine - fading flowers. I first started depicting flowers that were past their best some years ago when my children were younger. I would buy a bunch of fresh flowers to paint, but family responsibilities meant that sometimes the flowers were going over before I found time to depict them. I began to appreciate the fragile beauty of the blooms at this stage and started to experiment with painting them in their desiccated state.

In 2014 I grew some parrot tulips with the intention of producing a set of botanical illustrations to exhibit at the London RHS show. I wanted to show different parts of the plant - the bulb, bud, leaves, etc., and chose to show them against black backgrounds as a nod to the 17th century Dutch floral still lifes.

After this exhibition I still had the remains of the plants, which, for some reason, included a cut flower from the Texas Flame parrot tulip. Because of my interest in depicting dried flowers I hung onto this rather than assigning it to a compost heap. (I now have several boxes brim full of such subjects!). I am fascinated by the twists and turns of the petals as they dry and the fragility of the flower, which often results in parts becoming dislodged so I tried to capture this in my painting. The tulip is painted larger than life, as the original flower had shrunk during the drying process.

I tend to start any painting with layers of wet-in-wet and this painting was no exception. Once I am happy that I have some form on the petals I can use drier techniques to add veining and other detail, which is often more pronounced on the translucent petals. When I posed the subject ready to paint I made sure that there was some backlight penetrating the petals, as I wanted to capture this translucence to further emphasize the delicacy of the bloom.

Having completed the flower, I had the painting framed and exhibited it here in the UK. However, I decided that I wanted to further enhance the vintage feel of the subject by making changes to the background. So I unframed the picture and re-stretched it so I could experiment with tinting the background. To create the sense of age that I was after I decided to paint the background to echo the blotches and veining of natural calfskin vellum. Of course I could have started by painting the subject on a piece of such vellum, but my preferred wet-in-wet techniques would not be so co-operative on such a surface.

I have many other faded flowers that I'd like to experiment with placing against such a background, but meanwhile I hope you enjoy the celebration of enduring elegance and fragility that I have sought to capture in this image.

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Read more about this artist’s work: 20th Annual International