STORY BEHIND THE ART OF DICK RAUH

21st Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists at Wave Hill

Nigella capsules x 6

Nigella damascena

I am always on the lookout for the differing forms that flowers take on their life cycle, especially when their service to pollination is over and they get down to the business of producing seeds. The flowers of love-in-a-mist, Nigella damascena, are surrounded by a collar of finely dissected bracts, hence the ‘mist’. On their journey to seed production they form capsules that release their seeds by means of openings at the apex, instead of the more usual slits of other plants, and this form alone is a challenge to draw. But what happens to the ‘mist’ adds another dimension that attracted me. Now brittle and tangled the remains of the bracts set off the poricidal capsules as the living ones did the flowers, and I have my subject. 

The painting shows three of these capsules at a stage when they glow a golden brown but where some of the persistent extensions of the styles that crown the capsule have broken off, as have some of the bracts. The lowest of the three capsules is tilted toward the viewer, revealing the pores where the seeds are released. I find the transition in color of the dry fruit a subtle but effective test for my palette. They often go from tones of green to a dull grey brown as they age. Seizing the most appealing stage is one of the trials of concentrating on this final period of growth. The surface texture of the five carpellate capsules is another area that provides an outlet to my skills, where to most plant-lovers the color and form of petals would hold the greater appeal. Keeping track of the form of the bracts, which were a tangle and somewhat broken at this point of the cycle, led me to look back to an earlier stage when they were still alive, and I was able to see the dissection more clearly. Knowing this helped me to visually untangle and clarify what I saw, and again proved my thesis that knowledge of what is botanically typical informs and clarifies your vision of what you see.

This painting fits into the body of my work, which leans heavily on the depiction of dry fruits, most often enlarged, so that the exceptional architecture and detail of these mostly overlooked remnants is presented to the viewer, with the hope that they will win admirers and expand their appreciation of the natural world.

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Read more about this artist’s work: America's Flora