Story behind the art of Gillian Rice
26th Annual International
American Society of Botanical Artists and Marin Art and Garden Center
Purple Prickly Pear
Opuntia santa-rita
Many people unfamiliar with the Sonoran Desert tell me: “Oh, I couldn’t live there; I much prefer to live where I can see the changing seasons.” Well, I also like to experience the rhythms of the year and I make my home in Phoenix, in the Sonoran Desert. And here, we have five seasons! This is because spring comes early, followed by a very dry, hot period (a first summer), and then the rains of the monsoon season arrive (a second summer). Fall feels like another spring as temperatures drop, plants perk up, and creatures become more active. The curve-billed thrasher, my favorite desert songster, begins to sing again. In the cool winter, rain encourages plants to thrive and produce spring displays. The Sonoran Desert climate produces surprisingly green habitats with plenty of shrubs, trees, and succulents, all blooming at various times of the year.
In early March I notice with anticipation many buds embellishing my prickly pear cacti. I can’t wait till peak blooming time in April when I can watch solitary bees wriggle among the flowers’ stamens. I have never seen honeybees visiting these flowers. Instead, I am delighted by bees which collect pollen under their black and white striped abdomens (unlike honeybees that have baskets on their back legs for pollen collection). “My” bees are likely Lithurgopsis sp., which are specialists in cactus flowers.
Opuntia santa-rita was one of the first plants I chose for my garden. Taxonomic confusion exists about the correct scientific name. It’s easy for prickly pear cacti to hybridize. Opuntia santa-rita is native to Pima and Santa Cruz counties in Arizona and is found mostly around Nogales between the Baboquivari and Santa Rita mountains. This species is also found in New Mexico and Texas. Its preferred habitats are sandy or rocky soils and desert flats, grasslands, and hillsides about 3,000 to 5,000 feet in elevation. Javelinas (herbivorous animals that look like wild boars, but which are not pigs), jackrabbits, and rodents are among the animals that eat prickly pear. The fruit and pads are edible by humans, although my research suggests that Opuntia santa-rita is not one of the preferred prickly pear species for food. It is widely used as an ornamental xeriscape plant.
What’s the common name? For Opuntia santa-rita I found several names but of them I chose purple prickly pear. The plant’s color is why I selected it for my garden and for my painting. Quite the chameleon, this plant seems to be mostly blue-green in the winter when we have plenty of rain, but purple seeps across the pads during spring and by the end of the dry summer season they usually are completely purple. This violet tinge occurs when the plant is stressed. But even when it turns purple, it’s very easy to care for as I don’t need to give it supplemental water.
In my composition I wanted to show the creeping purple shade as well as the blue-green. And I wanted to represent the anticipation I feel in early spring. This meant including a bud, a flower just opening, and a new pad. On Opuntia cacti, pads are equivalent to stems. Mature pads of Opuntia santa-rita are mostly spineless, which makes this subject easier to portray than many other cactus species. Spines, which are vestigial leaves of cactus species, can be very tricky to paint. I was captivated when I first saw how the new pads develop. Mature pads are leafless but emerging young pads have many small cylindrical leaves, each tapering to a point. These fall off quickly.
On Opuntia santa-rita, any spines occur mostly along pad edges. I still faced challenges, nonetheless. I wanted to bring parts of the plant into my “studio” (a desk in a spare bedroom). Although spines might be absent from this species, troublesome glochids are not. These fine, detachable bristles with miniscule barbs are aggravating and very hard to remove from one’s skin. Small glochids surround each areole, which are in a regular pattern on each cactus pad, and yellowish-brown glochids can be seen on the top edge of the large pad and the pad (shown only partially) at the bottom left of my painting. Areoles are unique to cacti and are the places from which grow spines, flowers, or stems (pads, in the case of Opuntia sp.). I had to carry my subject with a pair of huge “plant tweezers,” essential for handling cactus. Cactus flowers open for only a day or two. I work slowly so I needed to use more than one flower. This was possible because my Opuntia santa-rita usually blooms for about six weeks. The flowers are shades of yellow on the outside and inside when fully open. Another challenge I faced was giving a sense of shape to a thin, flat pad.
My favorite way to paint is with drybrush watercolor on deer vellum. I buy my vellum from Pergamena, which sources deer skins from hunters. I feel happier knowing that the skin I am using comes from an animal which enjoyed freedom. I aligned the veining on this piece of vellum with my composition, having the darker parts at the bottom and the lighter part at the left side. I used a limited palette of Winsor & Newton paints, working very slowly to build up color, so as not to lose the lighter portions. Despite seeing countless workshop demonstrations about how to remove watercolor mistakes from one’s painting substrate, I find it extremely hard to remove paint. Therefore, slowly does it for me, in a mindful, meditative way.
I hope that you enjoy the gradual change from blue-green to purple that enchants me. I also hope you feel my sense of anticipation as spring beckons the bud and the young pad.
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Read more about this artist’s work: Abundant Future