Story behind the art of Mary Dillon

27th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists and the Society of Illustrators

Love-in-a-Mist

Nigella damascena

Love….in a mist, oh the romance of it!

This is not my first time painting love-in-a-mist. Many years ago, when my art practice was very different to my current fascination for achieving botanical detail, I found myself captivated by these star-like blue beauties emerging through a mist of finely divided bracts. The unapologetic romantic in me was compelled to paint it. The more I looked, the more I saw, the more I fell in love with this extraordinary splendor.

At the time, back in 2001, I was preparing for a solo exhibition, and I was very happy that my love-in-a-mist might be a good addition to my collection for the show.

Life has a way of taking us off guard, and very sadly, tragedy struck my family. My sister’s baby daughter died before she took a breath. Amid such grief and loss, there is little that gives comfort. We want to take the pain away for the ones we love, and yet, we know that’s an impossibility. Somehow I felt that love-in-a-mist belonged to my sister instead, so I gave my painting to her in memory of their little one. It has become a small symbol of her presence in the minds and hearts of the family.

Twenty years later, as a family, like all families, we have loved and lost. And I have loved and lost dear personal friends. Each love is a gift and a privilege, and each loss, a painful emptiness which fades a little with time. Somehow, love-in-a-mist has come to embody both deeply felt emotions. I often feel that my painting is most meaningful, most powerful, when it expresses something of the connections that I experience with those who have touched me deeply.

Not long ago, I was inspired again by a sense of awe at the beauty and the twisty quirkiness of the curly styles on the five carpels of the gynoecium, and by the feathery leaves and bracts surrounding the petals, with so many blues. This love-in-a-mist, Nigella damascena began life in Kerry, in the southwest of Ireland. Kerry was my first home, and my mother’s, so, looking back now, this was a fitting connection.

I continued to work on my painting, with new specimens and many color notes, on a painting retreat in Skiathos, Greece, where the infinite blues of the Mediterranean were imbued in each petal. My dear friend and fellow artist, Yvonne, welcomed me to paint in her studio. Yvonne recently and very unexpectedly, passed away. I miss her presence so much and yet, in every nuance of blue in these petals, she is there.

I could embellish this story by exploring the techniques employed in making my painting, the movement from wet to damp to dry painting techniques, using a limited palette of warm and cool primary colors. However, suffice to say that, for me, love-in-a-mist, Nigella damascena, is about connections, people, love, and loss, but mainly it’s all about love.

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Read more about this artist's work: 26th Annual