Story behind the art of Claudia Lane

26th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists and Marin Art and Garden Center

Jefferson’s Cleomes: as grown at Kelton House Farm, Wisconsin

Cleome hassleriana

I fell in love with Cleome hassleriana, known as the spider flower, during a botany for artists course at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Our instructor brought in dozens of specimens of many plants for us to examine. In a large white painter’s bucket was the weirdest and most structurally complicated plant I had ever seen. It was love at first sight! Delicate pink blooms topped a long stem encircled with spiraling individual leaves, protected with hairs and prickles. Contrasting with those tight spiral formations of leaves were large palmate leaves at the lower levels of the plant. But what grabbed my imagination were the long arms ending in the elongated seed pods that stretched out “spider-like” from the stem. As a reader of science fiction, I was immediately reminded of an imaginary space alien bent on world conquest. Over the years I have completed many pen and ink works, supported by multiple studies, of cleomes. They are a great subject for pen and ink because the lines needed to express the morphology are so varied and require long sweeps of the pen.

Many of my preliminary sketches were made at Kelton House Farm in Wisconsin. Its owner is dedicated to using only heritage species that complement his c. 1740 farmhouse moved from its original location near Deerfield, Massachusetts. In the farm’s glorious flower garden, Cleome hassleriana was included. The seeds came from Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s famed estate. This plant was introduced to North America from South America c. 1815, and Jefferson had used it liberally. The Wisconsin farm’s owner had extensive documentation of the fascination the plant held for Jefferson. In the Wisconsin garden, the plants were four to five feet tall, unlike modern hybrids bred to be “border sized.” The original plant is magnificent!

When I began to explore intaglio etching, my goal was to learn the print techniques of early botanical artists. Again, because line is so important in depicting cleomes, this seemed like an ideal subject for that medium. This work is from the second plate I completed, entirely different from my first cleome plate in composition, with its emphasis on the flower’s elements surrounding the habit. What appeals to me about etching is that once the plate is completed, one can experiment with special inking techniques on the plate. However, I especially love the purity and strength of black on white, as presented here. Hand pulling prints is tricky. It is exciting when a good one emerges from the pressing. What interests me most about etching is the actual etching process, the discipline of incising the correct, pure line into the unforgiving metal. My respect for the engravers of the past is enormous and being part of that tradition is very satisfying.

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Read more about this artist’s work: Wildly Exquisite