The Blessings of Mother Nature

My love of spring wildflowers may be genetic. When my maternal grandmother was a high school senior in 1912 she wrote “We hail the approach of spring… our pulses are stirring as the odor of the arbutus and the violet is wafted on the gentle breeze….” I hope my new acrylic painting “Showy Orchis” celebrates the glory of spring visually as elegantly as young Emma Fox did verbally.

My usual step-by-step progress is shown below, but I will divert for a bit to explain my inspiration for this painting. The wooden hillside where I live is a spring wildflower paradise, and this gorgeous wildflower has particular importance to me.

Before moving to Tennessee about 15 years ago, my knowledge of wildflowers was limited to those most common, like dandelion, daisies, and lily of the valley. While living in Florida, I had discovered a spectacular  passionflower blossom, only to be brutally attacked by fire ants when I reached to turn it for a better view! All this changed with my move to SE Tennessee. While walking through my forest early in the spring after building a house here, I literally lost my breath when I came upon a north slope carpeted in little blue bouquets (wild blue phlox, I later learned.) Exploring further I found an abundance of other blossoms, in shades of yellow, white, purple, pink, blue, green and even bright red. Then, at the base of a tall tree, I spotted a truly stunning cluster of flowers with white lower petals and purple hoods, surrounded by smooth green leaves. It looked like a Victorian nosegay, so perfectly assembled! I was overjoyed to discover how Mother Nature had blessed our land.

Long story short, I eventually identified those white and purple blooms as the beautiful Showy Orchis (aka Showy orchid, Galearis spectabilis). Since I was so unfamiliar with our land at the time of my first sighting, I was never able to retrace my steps. Over the years Rick and I groomed walking trails throughout our woods and I became fully acquainted with the various habitats of what grew to 65 acres. Every spring I found myself “stalking the Showy Orchis,” searching for where I thought I had seen the solitary plant, but I never could locate it again.

Curiosity aroused, I accumulated a library of wildflower field guides (tip: those organized by blossom color are best for newbies) and poured over them to the point of being able to identify each new discovery from having seen its photos in my books. After all these years, I have now ID’d nearly 100 different spring wildflowers on my land, with additional summer and fall wildflowers. Many of my photos have become references for my paintings, like pink lady slippers, queen anne’s lace, brown-eyed susans, daisies, bloodroot, wild daylilies, irises, and flowering wild dogwood trees.

A few years ago I started a “cultivated wildflower garden” on a trail about 50 feet from my house, where I walk with my dogs every morning. Over time I transplanted those I have in abundance and which are not endangered, threatened, or difficult to transplant. It now includes primarily spring wildflowers, such as yellow trillium, many different violets, blue-eyed grass, periwinkle, foam flower, little brown jugs, fire pinks, doll’s eyes, wood sorrel, wild petunias, columbine, and spring beauty. The garden grew from friends sharing various trilliums and crested iris, and from those I’ve purchased from wildflower nurseries (green dragon, wild ginger, yellow root, black and blue cohosh). By watching this garden daily, I can see what is growing and flowering before I venture further into the woods or bushwhack on our steep slopes. I can also study each plant throughout the growing season, seeing the red berry cluster which forms in jack’s pulpit and the crane’s bill shape of wild geranium when it forms its seed pod. A couple of years ago I even purchased Showy Orchis roots online and planted them in this garden; I was disappointed when nothing grew. I later learned that Showy Orchis grows only where a particular fungus is available in the soil to provide nutrients for its roots. Anyway, my cultivated wildflower garden is a delight, and an easy walk to share with others.

Fast forward to spring 2018; as I led a few wildflower fans on a tour along our spring-fed creek in April, a friend stooped down and said, “Judy, what is this flower?” As I got closer, I gasped then squealed … it was a Showy Orchis plant!! My friends didn’t understand why I was so excited, so I quickly explained. I looked around for landmarks so I’d be able to find it again (nowhere near where I thought I had seen them years before, by the way). In the days which followed, I walked back along the creek at different times of day, in different lighting, capturing my cherished find in photos. I put a small colored tag in the ground near the plant, to help me find it easily in the future.

This wildflower preserve has become my classroom, honing all my senses as I walk through the forest. I smell muscadine grapes in the fall, taste the sweet pulp of wild passionfruit, feel the prickly surface of the sweet gum seed ball, and hear the wings of wild turkey as they take off from the tree tops. Most importantly, my observation skills have been sharpened from constantly examining the wild growth. Now as I walk the trails, I see the shapes of dozens of hardwood leaves on the forest floor, the many different patterns of bark on the trees, the moss covered roots which would make a perfect Hobbit settlement, a depression in the leaves where a deer bedded for the night, and 50 shades of green in all the growth. With the right combination of morning moisture and sunlight, the forest turns into a fairyland, with sparkling dainty spiderwebs stretched everywhere! The effects of changing light, length of day, weather conditions, moisture, temperature and other elements make me appreciate painted studies done by impressionist Claude Monet in his series of haystacks, waterlilies, and cathedral paintings. Undoubtedly, this backyard wonderland has influenced my awareness as an artist, and I am grateful to Mother Nature for being my teacher.

(Click on photo collage to enlarge it)

With all that said, I am happy to share the beauty of Showy Orchis in this acrylic painting. The natural coloring of this wildflower allowed me to work with a triad color scheme of purple, green, and a touch of orange (three complementary colors). The techniques shown in my work-in-progress photos is much like I used in my recent painting “Sunny Side Up,” although the woodland setting of the Showy Orchis does not have the stark sunlight of poppies in my garden.

I painted Showy Orchis in a realistic style, using acrylics on canvas. I selected my paint colors for their transparency, so the white of the canvas could show through and create luminosity. This is much like the white paper functions in traditional watercolor methods. Every bottle of the Golden Fluid Acrylics I use has a hand-painted swatch of color on its label, to illustrate how transparent or opaque the pigment is. You can see the difference on the swatches painted on the two bottles in photo #1, of two similar mustard colors. Given the choice, I went with the more transparent one, on the left. I often use Golden Acrylic Glazing liquid to thin my paints, which also makes the pigments more transparent. In the painting steps, you can see how I preserved the white canvas where the blossoms were drawn rather than covering the entire background with color and painting lights over darks; this adds to the color brilliance.

For the purple petals, I wanted to use transparent hues in both a “warm” and a “cool” violet. In photo #7, the two colors on the left are the ones I chose: Permanent Violet Dark for the warm and Dioxazine Purple for the cool. The third color “Light Violet,” shown on the right in the same swatch (which comes from a poster published by Golden years ago), shows a very opaque purple, as you can see by how it covers the black vertical bar, compared to the other two purples.

One other technique I’ll point out is how I put little white spots on the petals and leaves (step 9), to illustrate how they sparkled in the dappled sunlight. White gesso was applied with a pointed wooden skewer, dabbed randomly. Don’t think you need to restrict yourself to applying paint only with brushes – use whatever works. I’ve seen an artist dip a bunch of dried grass into paint to apply, and I’ve used the ends of branches myself.

Keep your eyes open and let me know if you ever encounter the Showy Orchis. By the way, if you have any plants to add to my cultivated wildflower garden, I have more space to fill!

I’ve made giclee prints of Showy Orchis, on paper and on canvas. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy its portrait here.