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You are here: Home / botanical art / From One Tree: Botanical Watercolor Paintings as Fine art Greeting Cards

From One Tree: Botanical Watercolor Paintings as Fine art Greeting Cards

March 4, 2023 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Laurel leaves watercolor

“From One Tree”, A new offering from The Gardener’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena

Before the Gardener moved onto land with a house she spent many years in a brick tower in the city. There her rooms were lit by the changing colors of the Sycamores outside the windows. Summers were dark, with a heavy cast of green oxide. Autumn showered the walls with gold, and in winter the air became blue.

The apartment building shared one side with an alley and here, on her daily walks, the Gardener began to notice unusual leaves scattered in the mud. The leaves were mottled with curious patterns and glowed with ruby, burgundy and lime. They seemed to have fallen from an ordinary laurel hedge, but all the other laurels in the neighborhood were monotonously dull and one color of green. She picked up one leaf and then another, and soon she was a collector, arriving each day to her rooms with pockets filled with fragile specimens.

Green laurel leaf watercolor

She pinned the leaves to a wall and studied them, and eventually she gathered up the courage to paint. Each layer of color was laid down, and observed, and at just the right moment of damp or dry more color would be added—one false move and the painting was ruined. Once in awhile a leaf appeared on the delicate hot press paper as real as if it had simply fallen, and then the Gardener exhaled.

A few months later she walked beneath the Black Locusts across the street and leaned down to find dozens of tear-shaped landscapes in shades of green and yellow and rust she had never seen before. Each leaf was a complete landscape of sky and canyon. These specimens too she pinned to the wall and studied as they changed shape, curling in the heat from the radiators.

Locust Leaves botanical specimens

Many years later, when the Gardener moved away from the city and became the caretaker, not just of window boxes, but of a garden with two Black Locusts and a 10-foot tall laurel, she learned that these colors and aberrations were the work of beetles and mites. For them each tree was the size of Idaho, each leaf indeed the length of a canyon. The Black Locusts failed, not from beetles but from age. The Laurel persevered through draught and predation and ice storms, and never turned any interesting colors at all: it remained simply a hedge.

It appeared that the multicolored and marvelous leaves were (irrefutably) Irreproducible Phenomena, existing only in one place, in one moment in time. The reminders of that moment have now been published by the Almanac as cards. Perhaps you will tuck a leaf of your own inside when you write a letter to a friend. Available in my shop in sets of 6, additional large prints available.

 

Leaf sequence paintings in watercolor

Red Laurel Leaf

Single locust leaf watercolor

*All artwork and text © Iskra Johnson. This work is copyright of the artist and is not for reproduction in any form, thank you!

Filed Under: botanical art, Botanical Art Cards, Watercolors Tagged With: autumn leaves, Botanical watercolor cards, the gardener's almanac of irreproducible phenomena, watercolor leaves

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Clouds. Finally the rains. Gravity and sky. Clouds. Finally the rains. Gravity and sky.
I’m thinking about clouds, infinitely. Right now I’m thinking about clouds, infinitely. Right now the clouds are in my yard, and I can see concentric circles radiating across the autumnal disintegration of lilies  as the afternoon finches find their rose colors reflected in the pond.
My focus has been on cities lately, and how you keep the humid understory while allowing (?) (“allow” is the voice of privilege if ever—) all who need housing to live and thrive in homes. And what is a home? Is it the atmosphere? A sense of (invincible) self? A medieval castle? An upzone? Or perhaps the atmospheric contagion of all my friends who slogged through the mud and scarce euphoria of Burning Man this last season. (It R A I N E D…) it could also be getting off the ferry and seeing the ghost-image of the viaduct, (that allowed everyone to inhale the horizon equally,) and accepting that the Urbanist dream lowers some pillars and raises others. (Don’t get me started on Urbanist dreams…) It is raining in my pond. I am praying that the rain is putting out the fires on the Olympic peninsula. The peninsula burning is like Iceland melting: no. Nonono. Enjoy the sunset;).
Equinox. 24 hours away, where the past is present Equinox. 24 hours away, where the past is present and the present is past. I have never been so grateful for place, history, the witness of weather. To sleep in a farmhouse with dreams of childhood, birth and rebirth. Always new lessons in letting go of those we love, and the startling grace of those who remember with us.
The Wandering Cloud. Have I ever been so glad to s The Wandering Cloud. Have I ever been so glad to see my least favorite color, starring in the sky? That would be alizarin crimson bane of my youth, stains and changes every landscape into a crime scene of mood. This particular day, however, bleeding instantly into night I found myself besotted. I walked the ridge and up the back roads over the bridge through the woods, dodging rain on the way home and those piercing headlights that seem to be something from a movie about outer space. This morning I woke late and my hair was curly still, and it felt like maybe day and night could be friends.
Sunday studies of motion and emotion. I’ve been Sunday studies of motion and emotion. I’ve been in an obstinately “unproductive” space this past week, but used my time well. Motion: I went swimming for the first time in 5 years; in the autumn’s holy light, the lake is a sacrament. Emotion: I watched three years of The Split in four days. Cried my eyes out. In awe of acting and a script this good. Sometimes you just have to take a vacation from yourself and let other people do life for you. On Hulu, BBC possibly the best relationship drama I have seen.
I’ve written a wild-mind sort of blog post in wh I’ve written a wild-mind sort of blog post in which I let the story of place, museums, witness and culture unfold as it wishes. It’s an old-style post before I had “newsletter consciousness.” (Sigh….when you send out a post with one image and a show announcement and maybe five more words and someone writes, “perfect length to view on my phone” you may be tempted to perform more of the same and forget the original muse, born long before success was judged by how well thoughts fit within 2x5” square inches. A few excerpts here and first link in bio to read the entirety. Witness and elegy is where I seem to live. Painting is acrylic ink on panel, a piece I have yet to resolve but like to see into for the next step.

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