THE LIZZIE SANDERS NEW ARTIST AWARD has a criterion that the “artist’s work shows great promise, and elicits the WOW! response.” This tall order is handily fulfilled by Sengmany Phommachakr, the first artist to receive this award.
Her work shows a “fresh, unusual and ambitious composition,” often including a cross-section tucked within a plant’s foliage. Sengmany reveals that it is her curiosity about the interior of each fruit that kicks off her painting process. After rendering the cross-section, an adventure begins.
She then surrounds the cross-section with tracing paper sketches of the other parts of the plant. The final composition often surprises Sengmany, who never knows how it will turn out.
Sengmany’s choice of unusual specimens also contributes to the WOW! response. These choices reflect her journey in life and her hopes for the world. Born in tropical Vientiane, Laos, of Chinese descent, her family immigrated to Montreal, Canada, when she was six. She is equally fluent in English, in French, her adopted language, and in Laotian, her mother tongue.
In her youth, she loved sketching and painting. Following her parents’ guidance for a potentially secure financial future, she earned a bachelor’s degree in science at McGill University. While studying plant science, two courses in scientific illustration ignited her interest in botanical art.
Her interest deepened in 2016, when she took a workshop by Margaret Best at the Waterton Wildflower Festival. From Asuka Hishiki, Sengmany developed her skill in depicting the surface textures of plants, and greatly enjoys this aspect of her work. In 2020, her painting of the bumpy-skinned bittergourd vine, Momordica charanthai, was juried into ASBA’s 23rd Annual International and displayed at Wave Hill’s Glyndor Gallery.
Each morning Sengmany begins the day with painting. When not painting, she devotes time to caring for her three teenagers, one of whom is in college. When the weather is warm, she prefers to paint outdoors where she grows many of the plants seen in her artwork. Completing a painting can take months, and Sengmany has podcasts to keep her company. Her favorites are The Daily by New York Times, BBC’s Garden Question Time, and a fiction podcast in French.
Looking ahead, Sengmany would like her art to champion botanical diversity and the acceptance and protection of unusual plants in the food system. By painting lesser-known heirloom plants such as the long pie pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo), she hopes to bring awareness to plants grown in North America where she resides, and in Southeast Asia where she grew up.
Sengmany intends to put her New Artist award dollars toward renewing her ASBA membership and registering for the 2023 annual conference in Mobile.