Category: SERIES: The Tangled Garden

Tangled Garden : Robin

Robin . From The Tangled Garden Series

I made The Tangled Garden Series as a reminder of the black and white illustrations in the children’s and botanical books of my childhood, and in some Japanese prints.

Apart from the fact that I love plants and many animals, what especially interests me is their patterns, which are brought out better in black and white such as the Branching Pattern of leaf veins and branching of tree-branches

These are not straight B/W photos, but originally coloured ones, which I have worked on “by hand” so to speak, not just using pre-made filters, to produce the effect which I wanted. Time-consuming!

Tangled Garden: Chocolate Lilies

Tangled Garden Series : Chocolate lilies

Although I have a fondness for poppies and roses, it is wildflowers and ferns which I like best.

Native lilies are a real source of joy in the Springtime. My favorites are the white Camas lilies, also called Easter Lilies,  but unfortunately they don’t take well to this particular b/w style.  Instead, here, we have chocolate lilies!

Chocolate lilies, Fritillaria, are found all along the Pacific Coast from California up BC to Alaska.  The Salish and other indigenous peoples used them for food.  The root is bulb-like, containing  grains a bit like rice,  which could be boiled or steamed. They could also be dried and stored for the coming winter.

The name comes from the colour, a purplish brown, not the taste, which is somewhat bitter, and as for the smell, the nicest way to put it is a bit like skunk cabbage! This attracts flies, which are the pollinators rather than bees.

If you want to know more about this interesting plant, here’s one source, a great site about nature on the west coast:

https://heartofthewestcoast.com/2012/04/26/spring-feast-for-the-eyes-chocolate-lilies/

Tangled Garden: Ferns

Tangled Garden Series: Ferns

Ferns are one of the oldest plants. They first appear in the fossil record about 360 million years ago, but many of our present families and species only appeared about 145 million years ago.

They are one of my favorite plants. I’m not sure exactly why, apart from the fact it’s interesting to think of how long they have been around and that I tend to like “green” plants more than most garden flowers. Perhaps it’s because they have been part of my life for so long. As a child, I played with friends in an overgrown vacant lot opposite our house, which we called The Jungle. There were lots of huge bracken ferns, now considered a weed, but not to us then. We used to dare each other to swing out on a rope hanging from a tree, over some very prickly bushes, and jump off at the furthest point of the swing to land safely in a mat of bracken, before the rope swung back again! Ferns were also one of my earliest introductions to making art, when my aunts showed me how to make rubbings over fern leaves with my crayons.

Ferns figure in some folk tales and children’s stories, and are the emblem of New Zealand and probably of many towns.