Story behind the art of Jean Emmons
26th Annual International
American Society of Botanical Artists and Marin Art and Garden Center
Black Jack Dahlia
Dahlia 'Black Jack'
This painting began as my demonstration piece for “Painting a Black Dahlia on Kelmscott Vellum” for the 2021 ASBA Online Conference. Usually demonstration pieces don’t go smoothly and I have to throw them out afterwards. But something about the zoom format allows me to relax and pretend no one is watching. The results are better.
I’ve been growing dahlias for over 30 years. Of the thousands of registered cultivars, only about 20 are considered “black” and only a few of those have both black flowers and also dark foliage. I have grown ‘Arabian Night’, ‘Black Satin’, ‘Hollyhill Black Beauty’, ‘Chat Noir’, ‘Fidalgo Blacky’. My favorite for beauty of flower form is ‘Rip City’. But it’s not a vigorous plant and I often lose it to mice. When ‘Karma Choc’ first came on the market, I was so excited about its form and dark foliage. However, it wasn’t strong and always flopped.
Dahlia ‘Black Jack’ is currently my favorite. A vigorous, six-foot plant with strong stems and smoky charcoal leaves, the flowers have a striking cactus form with velvety, alizarin, frosty grayish-green petals.
Mysterious and dramatic, dark flowers allow the full range of values so essential for painting structure. When I reach for paint, I’m not reaching for a specific color, I’m reaching for a specific black and white value. One of the most interesting ironies about color is that if you can visualize your subject in black and white, color becomes easy.
True black absorbs all electromagnetic radiation, all light waves. I keep that in mind as I look for color underneath the color. As I really can’t get too dark, I experiment with a variety of color hues in the underpainting. After building with many, many transparent veils of drybrush watercolor, I’ll switch to warm and cool blacks and cover up everything that doesn’t work for me. Dry brush covers all sins!
Most of the underpainting ends up covered by dark passages, but a rich surface is created that I hope people can sense, even if they can’t always see it.
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Read more about this artist’s work: 25th Annual