STORY BEHIND THE ART OF LARA CALL GASTINGER

19th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists & The Horticultural Society of New York

 Siberian Kale 

Brassica oleracea

 I grow a small vegetable garden in my front yard and have always been attracted to the dynamic edges of the kale leaves. I decided to grow and paint all the different types of kale as a personal project. This was a great focused topic to work on and I learned how to capture the different colors and textures of all the kale leaves. In this specific painting, the Siberian kale was particularly enjoyable to work on. Characteristic of Siberian Kale is the very white veining in the leaves. I painted the green while leaving the white of the paper unpainted so that these white lines appeared. This is in comparison to dinosaur kale that has dark green bumpy leaves and Winterbor that has even curlier leaf edges than Siberian.

Overall, it was challenging to paint all the leaves in this composition since kale wilts very quickly. Thus, I had the advantage of growing numerous specimens in my garden so that I could go grab a fresh leaf that I could photograph and place into my composition as I worked. I worked this way, leaf by leaf, composing the bundle of kale over time.

Cotton collection

Gossypium sp.

I am a botanical art teacher and my students love to bring me specimens to paint. A particular student had grown two varieties of cotton in her garden, the Sea Island Brown Cotton and the Red Foliated White Cotton. Both were grown early on in America, Sea Island Brown Cotton highly prized because of its long fibers and silky texture and Red Foliated White Cotton being a short staple white cotton. Beyond the intriguing history of this plant, I was inspired by the structural beauty and diversity in the different stages of the cotton boll. A cotton boll is the protective case around the soft cotton seeds. (The seeds are attached to the soft part of the cotton). I was attracted to the leaflike bracts that were a range of colors and sizes. The contrast of the soft fuzzy light cotton against the elegant bracts was a feature that I wanted to emphasize. In this painting, I showed a range of cotton bolls in different stages that are tightly closed, starting to open, overflowing with cotton seeds, and have emptied of their cotton seeds.

I tend to enjoy creating artworks that show collections that compare and contrast specimens. This allows the viewer to discover and be curious about the plant and to become their own observer of nature.

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Read more about this artist’s work: 18th Annual International