STORY BEHIND THE ART OF SUSAN TOMLINSON

22nd Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists at Marin Art & Garden Center

The Tumblers (Three Devil's Claws)

Proboscidea louisianica

Devil’s Claws belong to the genus Proboscidea, which is in the unicorn plant family, Martyniaceae. The strange looking seedpod that gives the plant its common name comes from the fruit, which looks somewhat similar to okra, only with a full belly and a curling tail. In fact, one fellow described it to me as looking like “an okra that swallowed a mouse.” The long tail could also be described as resembling a long, up-curling nose, hence the Latin name for the genus. (In fact, if you google “Proboscidea” without also appending “plant,” you are more likely to end up reading about elephants than Devil’s Claws.) When the fruit dries, the tail splits and forms the “claws.” Proboscidea evolved alongside the wooly mammoths. It is believed that the hooks of the claws probably caught in the fur of these animals and in this way the seeds were dispersed.

The plant is rather non-descript in appearance, though the aroma from the flowers can be a bit eye-watering. The unusual looking fruits are buried beneath large leaves, and so most people never notice them. It is the seedpods that catch our attention, and if the wooly mammoths are no longer around, those of us who have grown up walking around outside in the plains and deserts of the southwestern United States have done our own share of seed dispersal when the claws of the seedpods hitchhiked onto our pants and socks.

Proboscidea are considered by most people to be weeds; they are often found in drainage ditches and farm fields, and so this probably contributes to this perception. But the plant has its uses. The fruit—that mouse-swallowing okra—supposedly tastes like its look-alike, and can allegedly be pickled and eaten*. And the seedpod is cultivated for its claws by many Southwestern native cultures for use in basketry.

There are five species of Proboscidea in Texas, with seedpods ranging from about six to ten inches in size. Some of the cultivars developed for basketry have claws as long as fifteen inches. The Devil’s Claws shown tumbling through space in this painting are Proboscidea louisianica.

Though it may look as if this is a graphite drawing, it is in fact all done with watercolor, using a dry brush technique. The seedpods are various colors of grays and browns so it lends itself well to a monochromatic rendering, which would indeed argue for a graphite drawing. However, if you look very closely at the claws, it is possible to see subtle shades of other colors, like blues, greens, yellows, and pinks, and this is my primary reason for choosing a paintbrush over a pencil.

But there were other compelling reasons as well. In a workshop I took with Lizzie Sanders, she inspected a painting of a pair of Devil’s Claws on which I was working, and then commented that it was similar to fine tweed—you think it is just a plain brown, but when you look closely, you can see it is many different colors, placed side by side. I really liked that idea, and wanted to play with it some more with this painting.

I also wanted to give a sense of depth to the tumbling motion by using the “blue of distance,” a notion I am particularly obsessed with owing to an essay of the same name written by Rebecca Solnit. In it Solnit argues, among other things, that the blue of distance, such as the blue of mountains far away, is the light that never reaches us because it is lost in the atmosphere, and thus is a metaphor for what we can never possess no matter how much we desire it. The mountains, after all, only remain blue as long as they are far from us. Solnit calls it “the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not.” I am moved by this idea of the light that we see but can never have and think about it quite a bit (I re-read the essay about once a year), and so I wanted to pay homage to it in the painting. So with all things considered, watercolor was my only choice with this work.

*Though I personally have never known anyone who has actually tried this; I don’t really care for okra, and so have no plans to either pickle or eat anything that purportedly tastes like it.

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Read more about this artist’s work: 21st Annual