STORY BEHIND THE ART OF GILLIAN RICE

Wildly Exquisite: Florida’s Native Plants

Indian Blanket

Gaillardia pulchella

Often I am overwhelmed with the huge choice of botanical subjects. Indecision paralyzes me and I do nothing except yearn to paint. A good strategy for motivation is to commit myself to enter every ASBA exhibition.

ASBA’s Florida Native Plants exhibition posed a tough challenge. I live in Arizona where I assumed the ecosystems and plants would be very different from those in Florida. I downloaded the list of Florida’s native plants from the exhibition’s call for entries. Maybe, just maybe, I hoped, I could find something on the list that happened to be in Phoenix’s Desert Botanical Garden collection. What a wonderful surprise when I discovered Gaillardia pulchella on the list! Here was a native wildflower that grows from Virginia to Minnesota and south to Florida, Arizona, and Mexico. Yes, Arizona! And better yet, Gaillardia has long been a favorite of mine. I had even sown seeds in my own garden in early 2020. Here was my subject. Now my task was to nurture the precious seedlings.

The next challenge was how to portray Gaillardia and decide on the composition. I am fortunate to be able to attend ASBA conferences where I try to learn as much as possible in the conference workshops. I recalled a class I took a few years ago with Robert McNeill called “Creating Botanicals with Impact.” A key takeaway from this class was to portray part of a plant at larger than natural size. Gaillardia was perfect for this so I could depict the hairs on the stem and sepals. Because of the flower head’s small size (up to two inches in diameter), the hairs are not easily visible without a magnifying glass. And I love painting these kinds of details! A critique session I had with Fiona Strickland informed my composition as well. When looking at my portfolio, Fiona advised trying to think of ways of looking at your subject that are not so obvious, even looking underneath it, for example. I picked some flowers from my garden and held them in many different ways, until one flower “spoke to me.” I noticed it was quite common for the stems to bend in odd ways and so I wanted to choose a flower with a bent rather than straight stem, as this would add interest. And I decided to portray the flower from the side, giving me an opportunity to show the hairy sepals. I imagined that the sideways view would be what an insect or lesser goldfinch might see as it foraged in my Gaillardia forest, with the flower stems of varying heights. And how the goldfinches loved these flowers! Each time I popped out to gather more flowers for color reference, the little birds flew for cover to a nearby shrub.

The daisy-like flowers grow with rays in various shades of red and yellow with many ray flowers being darker towards the center and golden yellow towards the tips. The color patterns of a large patch of Gaillardia resemble blankets woven by indigenous Americans and a common name is Indian blanket or blanket flower. The genus name Gaillardia honors Antoine René Gaillard de Charentonneau (c.1720 - c.1789), a French magistrate, naturalist, and patron of botany. French colonists sent him seeds, which he cultivated himself and shared with other botanists. Pulchella means pretty. The Florida Native Plant Society finds it challenging to specify the exact native range of this plant in Florida because since the 1700s it has been widely planted on roadsides across much of the state.

According to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, the Kiowa native people considered this plant good luck. A tea of the root was used for gastroenteritis, with the chewed powdered root applied to skin disorders. The sore nipples of nursing mothers were bathed in tea made from Gaillardia and it was also used for sore eyes.

Not only is this plant attractive to seed-eating birds like my lesser goldfinches, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation designates Gaillardia pulchella as being of special value to native bees. It’s a perfect plant for a bee or butterfly garden.

My preference is to paint the plants in my own southwestern desert garden, so I was delighted to include Gaillardia pulchella in my portfolio. I used my favorite technique of drybrush, which I learned from the late Lizzie Sanders in ASBA conference workshops. I work with a limited palette of about five or six colors. I prefer to layer paint on the paper to achieve the right color and use tiny stipples of paint, so my technique is time-consuming, especially when painting the paler parts such as parts of the stem and sepals and the yellow petal tips. It’s crucial not to go too dark or heavy with the paint as it is difficult to remove. When I was close to completing my painting, my artist friend Fatima Zagonel gave me important feedback on shading.

I’m glad I had plenty of these flowers in my garden, but I still took photographs to have a reference for the composition. Wildflowers like Gaillardia are notorious for moving about when placed in a vase on my desk!

As people peruse my work, I hope they notice the beauty of this native wildflower. It’s delicate yet persistent. It fits the exhibition’s definition perfectly: wildly exquisite. The flowers have a calming and euphoric effect on me when I watch them flutter in afternoon breezes. I am sure other people can obtain this same benefit. I urge people to plant them in their wildflower gardens to benefit themselves as well as the bees, butterflies, and birds.

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Read more about this artist’s work: Abundant Future