STORY BEHIND THE ART OF JOAN KEESEY
16th Annual International
American Society of Botanical Artists and the Horticultural Society of New York
Hummingbird Sage
Salvia spathacea
Joan has been interested in botanical illustration ever since the sixth grade when she had a wonderful teacher who taught her class how to watercolor roses and pansies with considerable success. She says that botanical art has expanded her appreciation and knowledge of history, art, and botany. She emulates the botanical artist, A. R. Valentien (1862-1925), who was commissioned by Ellen Browning Scripps to illustrate California native plants. Valentien illustrated over 1000 plants; these paintings are now owned and exhibited by the San Diego Natural History Museum.
Joan’s own interest is also in painting California native plants. She lives in Los Angeles near the Santa Monica Mountains that are covered in chaparral, a diverse assemblage of different species of evergreen, drought and fire resistant shrubs. She has a summer home in Sequoia National Park, a five-hour drive from LA in the southern Sierra Nevada. This mountain range runs North-South throughout most of the state and includes Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the continental US, and three national parks—Sequoia, Yosemite, and Kings Canyon. The summer season in the park is short, with only two or three months to paint. Many of the plants and trees grow only at very high altitudes; for example, Coville’s columbine is found growing out of the rocks at about 10,000 feet and is unique to the area.
She paints what others don’t, because many of these plants are out in the wilds and aren’t really accessible. Many are small and low to the ground, and the flowers don’t last long, which makes painting them tricky, especially because she doesn’t like to rely on photographs. She does do some sketching en plein air. She has found that the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wild Flowers and Native Plants, which cultivates and promotes California native plants and seeds, has been a great resource.
She had long wanted to paint the Hummingbird sage (Salvia spathacea) because it is dramatic and striking, not tiny like many wildflowers, and it has unusual coloring. It grows in oak woodlands in the Santa Monica Mountains. The plant is quite large, maybe two and a half feet high. The lower leaves are yellow-green, crinkly like hydrangea leaves, and like the rest of the plant, covered with hair. The flowers are magenta, quite bright, with dark magenta stamens, and they attract hummingbirds. The calyx and bracts are a grey green tinged with purple. “My painting is one straight stalk with an emphasis on how the leaves form; I like the way they grow out of each other; I was thinking about putting other stalks in, but it felt too cluttered. I thought that a simple composition was more striking.”
She is currently working on the large shrub, Toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia), one of the more common chaparral shrubs in the Santa Monica Mountains and the Hollywood Hills. In December and January it is covered with brilliant red berries and is also known as Christmas berry or California holly; the city of Hollywood is named for it.
Joan continued her interest in plants and botanical painting throughout a long career as a computer programmer and data analyst.
But for many years, the pressures of family and job took priority. Now that she is retired, the pressure is off and she is able to dedicate herself to her art. She says “I do this for myself and I like that.” She remains curious about the relationship between art and science. “Both are about problem solving and attention to small details. A difference is that in programming, the end was never as interesting to me as the process, whereas in botanical illustration, it's both. In botanical illustration, I have to make a lot of decisions: How to place the plant on the page, translate it from three dimensions to a flat image, and achieve depth in the representation. I think that taking a white piece of paper and creating a picture is magic!”
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