STORY BEHIND THE ART OF DICK RAUH

16th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists and the Horticultural Society of New York

Wild Yam Capsules

Dioscorea villosa

Wherever I go, I am always on the lookout for interesting plant forms that appeal to my senses. I teach, and many specimens go into the press or box I keep for class, illustrating some type of leaf, twig or, mostly, dry fruit. “Oh” I say to myself, “what a great example of a loculicidal capsule” or some such esoteric garbage. Friends and family act as my agents and bring me specimens that they think I will like. Fortunately most of the subjects I get most excited about are fairly long lasting, and only require undisturbed shelf space until I get around to painting them. I tend to be turned on by small, delicate and usually brown material; when I put it under my scope for a closer look is when the magic begins. The details that make these remnants function, of how a particular species makes variations on a familial theme to achieve its end, are what my paintings are all about. 

I spotted the golden papery wafers of the wild yam vine growing along a trail in a local preserve, and picked them. The three oval, tissue-textured wings of the capsule appealed to me and were the spark that set me working on the Dioscrea.

Hanging from a bit of vine, only partly visible at the top of the painting, is a series of golden brown capsules, dancing across the space in varied attitudes, raising towards the right with one interruption, like the notes of a scale. I laid emphasis on the papery texture of the skin, enclosed in a rim circling each wing. The technique is dry brush watercolor, depicting the surface details over washes that establish the three dimensional form. The painting, like most of my work, is an enlargement of the original, part of my desire to make the incredible but often unseen architecture of these small specimens available to the viewer. The whole is designed to produce a challenging and unusual composition.

My aim in my work is to make the viewer aware of the inherent beauty and order that exists in nature, primarily, in my case, not in the spectacular and colorful, but in the understated and insignificant. Well within the parameters of this desire, “Wild Yam Capsules” is a logical extension of my body of work. 

Next Story

Back to List