Story behind the art of Susan Tomlinson

26th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists and Marin Art and Garden Center

Arkansas Green Cotton

Gossypium hirsutum 'Arkansas Green'

I get asked a lot of questions about cotton. Everyone knows the end-product, but few have ever seen the plant from which it comes. I was the same way before I started growing and painting it, and so I understand people’s surprise to find, for example, that cotton has a flower, or that the flower changes color after it is pollinated, or that the lint that people associate with cotton is locked up in a fruit called a “boll,” or that you find the seeds for the next plant hidden deep inside the lint.

I’ve been growing different species and cultivars in my garden for a few years now, and the overflow gets planted in my alleyway. It’s a nice alley, so my neighbors often walk their dogs down it, and as they do so they’ve come to know some of cotton’s mysteries a little better. Even so, there are still questions. And so, in response, I created a painting of answers, which is one in a series. I’ve composed my painting showing each stage of cotton’s life cycle, starting with the bud in the center (hidden inside bracts in a structure called a “square”), then moving counter-clockwise from the bud to the unpollinated flower, the pollinated flower, the boll, the locks of lint, the husk from which the lint is harvested, and the seeds as they are pulled from the lint. Each component is botanically correct and is diagnostic to the species and cultivar.

This painting depicts Gossypium hirsutum, which comprises nearly 96 percent of all commercially grown cotton. (You are probably wearing G. hirsutum as you read this.) The cultivar is ‘Arkansas Green,’ one of many varieties developed to create colored textiles without the need for dyes.

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Read more about this artist’s work: Abundant Future