2008 Botanic Art Exhibit: Pacific Northwest Chapter of the American Society of Botanical Artists

History

In November 2002, the American Society of Botanical Artists (ASBA) requested the formation of a new chapter in the Pacific Northwest.  Louise Smith eagerly took on the project and began contacting possible interested ASBA members.  By February 2003 the stage was set.  Louise organized the first meeting and naming of the new local chapter Pacific Northwest Botanical Artists (PNBA) occurred.  Appointments and general goals for the PNBA were approved by the initial membership of 14.  Through the following months, the business of creating a full-fledged chapter of the ASBA gained momentum.  As PNBA’s first president, Louise obtained pro bono advice from one of her students, Marcia Newlands, an attorney at Heller Ehrman, LLP to write PNBA's bylaws and Articles of Incorporation.  George Carpenter, PNBA’s first Treasurer, was asked to begin the process of gaining non-profit status for PNBA.  By August 2003, final drafts of the PNBA bylaws and Articles of Incorporation were reviewed and approved.  September 2003 saw the PNBA assigned non-profit status followed by the opening of a bank account.  Today, the PNBA is a thriving organization of 33 members strongly dedicated to PNBA's mission "to promote public awareness of an appreciation for botanical art …”, to expand the education and the professional development of member artists and to “… to make contributions … to the community through volunteer activities."

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

JEAN EMMONS
An enthusiastic gardener, Emmons usually grows her subjects, or sometimes picks them up along a roadside.  She enjoys scrutinizing each millimeter of a plant “as if I’ve never seen it before.”

“I love growing beautiful flowers. However, lately I have no desire to paint them.  At any one time, I’ll have 25 Dahlia cultivars going in the garden.  I look at the dahlias and I think to myself, they are perfect. I can’t possibly make them as beautiful and pristine as they are in real life, so why try?  Then, I’ll look down on the ground at some molding leaf and think, I’d like to paint that.  Or, I’ll look in my refrigerator and think, I wonder if I could make that moldy carrot look interesting.”

In 2005, Emmons received a Gold Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society for an exhibit of paintings of Pacific coast irises.  Also in 2005, she won the prestigious American Society of Botanical Artists Award for Excellence in Botanical Art.  Her work is included in numerous collections including the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, the Royal Horticultural Society and the Shirley Sherwood Collection.

Last autumn, she won Best in Show at the International Botanical Art Exhibition at the Horticultural Society of New York.

SUZANNE FERRIS
I grew up in Edina, Minnesota and finished my BA in Fine Arts in 1976 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  The arts education I received was directed towards the traditional crafts, including draftsmanship, typography, ceramics, metal arts, print and papermaking.  
I avoided painting because abstract art was undermining my attempt to learn how to use pigment on paper or canvas.  My husband, Neal Bonham, and I started Sea Pen Press and Papermill in 1977, when we moved back to Seattle.  We purchased a hollander beater, and slept on top of the packing crate, in a one-car garage for a short time before becoming wildly successful for six months.  We stuck with the business of selling letterpress books printed on handmade paper for another twenty years.

I think the best botanical art includes cast shadows, against a ground, seating the specimen in its world, giving direction to the light source, making the plant pop off the page.  This makes it trompe l'oeil, not mere illustration.  Color juxtaposed in nature can change moment to moment, giving off first a warm then a cool version of itself.  This shift from magenta to carmine, for example, within a leaf reads as growth or death.  Capturing that quality on paper is an amazing challenge.

My first teachers, at what was then called The Academy of Realist Art, were Margaret Davidson and Lisa Beemster.  I learned basic watercolor techniques as well as composition.
I am now attending landscape design classes at Edmonds Community College and learning to think in four dimensions about plants in the landscape.  Time has to be factored into the equation of space, making gardening a living art form.  When I paint now, I like to work en plein air, and respond in the moment to light shifts, and color movement.

KATHLEEN MCKEEHAN
I started on the path of botanical illustration when I signed up for Louise Smith’s botanical watercolor class at the Center for Urban Horticulture in 1995.  Louise encouraged me to apply to University of California Santa Cruz’s natural science illustration program in 1998, where an intense year of work, and an internship at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, launched me on a freelance career as illustrator and painter of botanical and other subjects.  Since then I’ve done a variety of illustrations of everything from plants to people for a wide range of clients—magazines, museums, textbooks, children’s books, wildlife organizations, etc.

If the choice of subject is my own, botanical painting remains a personal favorite.  I’ve also begun teaching, through CUH and on the Kitsap side of the water where enthusiastic students and a subject I love make for enjoyable work.  My membership in the American Society of Botanical Artists’ local chapter, the Pacific Northwest Botanical Artists, has been an important adjunct to my painting.  The opportunities for workshops, shows, and botanically-related events, and perhaps, even more, the chance to interact with others who are passionate about the art have been important to my development as a botanical artist. 
I hope to be able to focus more on botanical subjects as my career and my development as an artist progress.

SYLVIA PORTILLO
Motivated by numerous childhood visits to art and natural history museums, Sylvia Portillo has made it her personal goal to turn her love of nature and art into a professional career.  There is no other discipline like natural science illustration that offers her the opportunity to combine her fascination with art and science and the delight of “show and tell.”  She feels that she owes her love of art to her grandmother who took her and her sister to all of the art, history and industry museums in downtown Los Angeles; “we visited them all, one by one, every day during the two weeks of each summer we stayed with her.”  It was her taxonomy instructor who sparked the idea that Sylvia could make a career of drawing the plants she loves.

Sylvia believes that the most difficult thing about being an artist is staying focused because there are so many interesting subjects, media and technical methods yet to be investigated.  Mostly self-taught, Sylvia currently specializes in botanical and wildlife art. She currently lives and works in a wooded section of West Seattle with her husband and a family of cats.  Her work can be found published as book illustration, card-art, on art tiles and the accompanying field guide to Mark Dion’s Seattle Vivarium, Olympic Sculpture Park. Sylvia uses a variety of media to create her art, but with a single goal to share the wonders of nature as seen through her eyes.

LOUISE SMITH
Louise comes to botanical art with a life-long love of plants nurtured during childhood botanizing forays in the High Sierras.  She believes that art functions as a non-verbal language which translates something of the artist’s interior world and it is this that allows communication across culture, subject matter, and through time.

Smith received a BA in Landscape Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley. She practiced in that field for ten years, before studying scientific illustration at California College of Arts and Crafts, and with Phyllis Wood at the University of Washington.
Clients include Kew Magazine, Simon and Schuster, Horticulture Magazine, Taunton Press, Magazine Group of Meredith Corporation, the U.S. Forest Service, the Washington Native Plant Society and Rodale Press.

She is represented in the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation collection and other institutional, corporate, and private collections.  She has been invited to contribute to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Florilegium Society as well as the Filoli Florilegium.

Examples of Louise’s work are included in the book Today’s Botanical Artists published in 2008.  She exhibits throughout the United States and Canada and is represented locally by Fine Impressions and Kaewyn Galleries.

Louise is the founding President of the Northwest Botanical Artists, a chapter of the American Society of Botanical Artists.

DORI WESTPHAL
I am a Seattle native, and began painting after retiring in 1991 from full-time employment as a laboratory technician and accountant.  While working in volunteer organizations, I tried my hand at painting, with art courses at South Seattle Community College under Mary Lantz.  After retirement, I hiked and backpacked through the magnificent western mountains and along our awesome Pacific coast, in the woods, along rivers, wherever our hearts led us.  I traveled throughout Europe.  My love of the natural world surrounding us became the subjects of my paintings.  From oil, I moved into watercolor and pen and ink drawings. 
Old, dilapidated houses and cabins that once burst with life, but now stand silent, are another favorite subject.  There is beauty in old gnarled trees and snags, and these appear often in my art.

Though I exhibit primarily locally, my art is represented in private collections across the US and in Europe. 

I earned a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences degree at the University of Washington in 1987, having earlier studied accounting at Seattle Community College and Shoreline Community College.  My art education includes design and art courses at South Seattle Community College, and numerous artists’ workshops in the Seattle area.

I am a member of Arts West Artists Association, Artists United, Burien Art Gallery, and the
Pacific Northwest Botanical Artists.

Also contributing:

CHRISTY BARTON
JAN HURD
PEGGY MILLER