Story behind the art of Kathy Schermer-Gramm

27th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists and the Society of Illustrators

Tall Goldenrod with Galls in Winter

Solidago altissima

I am fascinated by variations in the usual appearance of plants created by the effects of environment, weather, or animal interaction. In this instance, my eye was drawn to the multiple galls that seem to float atop the tall goldenrods (Solidago altissima) along our roadside in winter. Like many insect galls, the goldenrod gall fly (Eurosta solidagnis) lays its eggs at the base of developing goldenrod buds. A single larva then burrows into the stem, allowing the plant tissue to swell, forming the rounded gall that provides shelter and food for the larva until the mature insect emerges in the spring. The plant remains healthy, only becoming disfigured. During the winter, the galls are often found by the downy woodpecker (Picoides pubescens), which pecks a hole into the outer wall to retrieve the tiny protein-rich morsel.

This watercolor painting started as a reinterpretation of a graphite drawing that I had created for a series of illustrations published in The Weeds, a mystery novel by Katy Simpson Smith. The novel centers around the making of the Colosseum florilegium in the 1800s by the botanist Richard Deakins. This goldenrod drawing is one of my favorites in the series. Since it was sold, I decided to paint it in watercolor to fully explore the muted winter palette.

Tall goldenrod is seen growing in disturbed areas, creating large swaths of gold in the fall. After the frost, the leaves and flowers naturally droop and curl around the stems, and each other, as they dry out. Taking advantage of this, I orchestrated the composition so that several gall-topped stems appear in the act of embracing and holding each other upright. Their downward spiraling limbs and top knotted galls interact and spin through the picture plane as the fluffy flower heads bend to disperse their pappus seeds to float off into the breeze. My vision is of a whimsical Dr. Seussian family of oddballs. 

The winter palette offers up many shades of brown, so I likewise chose to float the plants on a hand-tinted background consisting of earth toned watercolors to simulate the look of natural calfskin vellum. I often tint the backgrounds of my paintings so that they harmonize well with the subject, to make earthy colors dominant. The first wash base layers of the subjects start with reds, violets, or yellows, which peek through the subsequent drybrush layers and change the overall temperature of the different parts of the subjects. One example is to apply a bright red under an area in the darkest shadows. This allows the red to filter upward through the top layers and create a rich color depth not usually seen when using a single mixed brown. By changing those base colors, I can shift any earthy color’s dominance and temperature, depending on its placement in the composition and how the light plays upon the subject’s surface.

Like many botanical artists, I build my paintings up slowly, working from loose base washes to layers of dry brush meticulously applied, then finishing off with top glazes of pure color again to shift the color range and to soften the strokes beneath. A particularly challenging portion of this painting was to capture the mostly white hairs of the seeds without relying too heavily on a dark background. I first applied a light diluted wash, and then added the texture of the hairs by defining the negative space between them and articulating parts of the seed receptacles that poked out intermittently. Then, I overlapped the hairs on top of a portion of the darker goldenrod stem to repeat their softness so that the viewer can visualize the overall natural appearance of the dried flowers.

Next Story

Back to List

Read more about this artist's work: 25th Annual