STORY BEHIND THE ART OF LISA POMPELLI

Weird, Wild, & Wonderful

Second New York Botanical Garden Triennial Exhibition

2014 - 2016

African blood lily

Scadoxus puniceus

After acquiring a large, crusty bulb for a commission, I potted it and waited months until something happened. To my surprise a plant more alien than terrestrial emerged out of the dirt: a shiny blood-red bud pushed through a dark purple-spotted sheathing. The swelling bud rode on top of a telescoping bright green stem and burst with a densely packed head of orange-red florets. The florets that could escape the rigid bracts looked limp and exhausted from their constraints. I decided to liberate three so the viewer could see their delicacy and also to counterbalance the tangle of fleshy roots below. 

I was commissioned by noted plant ecologist, Dr. Phil Rundel, from the University of California in Los Angeles to illustrate an educational poster about all five Mediterranean climates regions of the world, such as California, southwestern Australia, central Chile, the Mediterranean Basin and the Cape Region of South Africa. Along with numerous maps, diagrams and text, there were to be a handful of emblematic plants from each region. The Scadoxus lily was to be included in the South African section of the poster. Some plants were in flower and available from various University of California campus botanical garden collections. Other freshly cut specimens for me to immediately illustrate arrived via Fedex in large styrofoam boxes from South Africa, Australia and Chile. It was interesting to see how similar each region’s plant characteristics were despite the enormous geographical separation. I grew up in the Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California playing in the chaparral - an almost identical vegetation with thick leathery leaves that exists in all five regions and is an excellent example of convergent evolution. 

In the end, the Scadoxus was not used as a subject for the poster, but I wanted to paint it anyway. It was a bit cumbersome to handle the large potted plant in my studio and to get the flower at eye level while painting. I spent a lot of time juggling myself and that pot around to get a good view of each section. One day the pot broke and there were the roots, which were also wonderfully weird! Fortunately, I had used a large piece of paper and had centered the painting on it, something I remind my students about, so I had enough room to add the roots. I painted it life size, and I did it slowly and carefully over two seasons.

Although my plant is called African blood lily, it belongs to the Amaryllidaceae family, not the Liliaceae family. I think the common name African blood lily was given to it years before molecular analysis of plants was feasible. The Liliaceae family has gone through many changes, and the genus Scadoxus was most likely moved from the Liliaceae family to the newer Amaryllidaceae family.

About 80% of my work is commissions for botanical illustrations for institutions and private collectors. Many of them are for books, magazines and educational materials such as posters. Also, I teach botanical illustration at the Huntington Botanical Gardens. I am still enamored with the Scadoxus and glad I invested considerable time into painting it for my own pleasure. I hope viewers will be happily surprised by this example of the great diversity of plants. I have never submitted a painting before to an ASBA exhibition, and I am very excited that my painting was selected as part of this one. 

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