STORY BEHIND THE ART OF BETSY ROGERS-KNOX

15th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists at

The Horticultural Society of New York

Common Mullein

Verbascum thapsus

What is your personal view of the artwork, for instance in terms of media, colors, composition? 

I was trying to show a plant life cycle.

This plant is very tall, can be 5 ft high or more, so I had to compose the stalk to fit the page. I chopped it to a foot and a half and added in the withered winter stalk as well. I put a sample of the greenery at the bottom of the page.

Why did you choose this subject to portray?

Common mullein is a weed – I was fascinated because it is an old weed that you wouldn’t really notice.

It isn’t in someone’s garden. It has big tall spikes of yellow-orange flowers and the leaves are soft and feathery, like lamb’s ear. One winter, I found the leftovers of a plant along the side of a road near my home and I liked it. The next summer, I found a beautiful specimen at a nearby farm and I brought it into the studio to paint.

Did you face any unique challenges as you worked on this piece?

It was challenging to capture that really soft, furry feel of the leaves – they are very hairy, fat and puffy.

Also, the work was challenging to compose because the plant is so tall. 

What would you hope people would notice or appreciate when viewing this work?

I hope that they will give the plant a second look if they are out walking or driving in the countryside in August or September, and appreciate it as a beautiful plant.

How does this work relate to your body of work?

I love finding a plant and watching it for a year or even 2 years, watching the cycles, thinking about it a lot, figuring out how to make a composition where I can include all the different stages of the plant. I like to look at the whole picture. I like to show all those phases from start to finish, in every season, seed and bud to blossom, then the wilting leaves, what it looks like in the winter and how it emerges again in the spring. I love the part about how that bud emerges or how that plant comes out of the earth. Often the before and after are fascinating. I like to include the environment too, where you find the plant. I like to tell a story. I want the viewer to walk through the painting, saying – “oh, I get it, this is what it would look like in the spring.” 

This painting of mullein had the bloom only in summer and winter, thus, a simplified version of my four season approach. 

I so enjoy this field. The most fun part is doing the work, the process. 

 What is your background?

When I was a young adult, my husband and I lived in Boulder Colorado. I was fascinated with the wildflowers when hiking. I volunteered at the herbarium at the University of Colorado and that is where I got interested in botanical art. I painted flowers on my own and belonged to an arts coop. In the early 80s, I wrote to Anne Ophelia Dowden, who was from Boulder, and asked her what I should do with this interest. She wrote me a wonderful letter and told me to go to the New York Botanical Garden and enroll in their Certificate Program. And eventually, years later, I did!

After Colorado, my husband and I owned a bed and breakfast for 13 years on the coast of Maine in an old sea captain’s house. There was a gallery on the main floor just off where guests registered and I painted and exhibited there.

Then we moved to Connecticut and I said, now it’s my turn: I am going to go to the NYBG. A thread from the past. I commuted to the Bronx and completed the Certificate Program.

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