Story behind the art of Christiane Fashek

27th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists and the Society of Illustrators

Up, with a Twist

Physcia aipolia, Punctelia rudecta, Ramalina celastri, Ramalina complanata, Teloschistes exilis, Teloschistes chrysophthalmus, Xanthomendoza weberi, on Quercus fusiformis

A clump of Teloschistes was my gateway to Texas Hill Country lichens. While collecting natural ephemera to build a “mouse house” with my children, I put a toy magnifier up to a twig and saw orange, eye-lashed saucers on stalks staring back at me. What are these?!

I carried several lichen-laden twigs back to New York and brought one to a noted lichenologist whose class I was taking. “Have you ever seen anything like this?” I asked, sure to impress. “I guess you’ve never seen the cover of Lichens of North America,” he said. “That’s a Teloschistes and the book is a well-known lichen guide.” Face-palm for the vast amount of information I did not know – and will never know – about lichens, but excitement too, because now I had a lead in identifying this and other specimens.

For my New York Botanical Garden Botanical Art & Illustration Certificate project, I decided to paint lichens in colored pencil. Capturing the golden-eye lichen in a realistic manner, amid other species frequently found together, was my goal. I knew I’d have to enlarge my subjects to capture their textures and characteristics. But how could I show the beauty of the fruticose lichens growing off the twig radially? And would I be able to convey the interwoven layers of the three main types of lichens: fruticose (the most plant-like and three dimensional), foliose (leafy, lettuce-like with low apothecia) and crustose (adhered to the substrate)?

I perused my “personal herbarium collection” and came up with an inch of twig broken from a branch of live oak. The twig curved around an area where a node had snapped off revealing bark. A cacophony of lichen types and forms yielded a symphonic palette. My specimen had been apartment-bound and was in a dry, dormant state. The hemispheric saucers of the golden-eye lichen had folded in halves or convoluted peace signs as they dried. I photographed the twig in an alluring perspective and set about figuring out what was on it.

I identified seven recognizable species, but the two Teloschistes with their slender, wrinkled, and bifurcating stalks required significant magnification. I plotted points on a grid at 10:1 and used my proportional dividers to double the twig’s silhouette to 20:1. On the 20x “botanical cartoon” I sketched in details, added notes about each species, scribbled in shadows, and marked voids, turns, and species’ overlaps.

I started by painting the young Ramalina celastri in the lower left quadrant. When I was satisfied by the iridescence of the forward straps, I tackled the tangles of Teloschistes above them. Unsure of my ability to delineate the tiny cilia in pencil, I used drybrush watercolor. I returned to the bottom of the twig to wrap the slender orange bush lichen around the back and peered down my microscope to see the bare-bottom sunburst lichens (what a name!), and the blue-grey hoary rosettes. Knocking over the microscope, I shattered the foliose lichens. The microscope survived my clumsiness, but I was disappointed to have destroyed the specimen. Another look at the magnified twig revealed all the bark and fruticose lichens that had been obscured by the showy foliose, an unexpected joy.

The final challenge was the portrayal of the twig into the distance. I had planned to paint it continuing off the page. In her Portfolio Review class, Robin Jess asked what value this would add. Great question! I now ask it of myself and my students all the time. Sometimes less is more, and in this case, fading the twig keeps the eye from moving off the page.

The title Up, with a Twist refers to the direction and shape of the twig and to the lemon yellow undertones of the Ramalinas. It was also my cocktail of choice back when I had time for such things. 

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Read more about this artist's work: Curious Allies