Story behind the art of Gillian Rice

Botanical Art Worldwide 2025-A More Abundant Future:

Diversity in Garden, Farm, and Field

American Society of Botanical Artists at the Foundry Art Centre, St. Charles, MO

Purple Dragon

Daucus carota

During the pandemic, unable to visit family in Europe, I devoted much more time to my garden and found it comforting to be immersed in the natural world. It was a good time to explore new things to grow.

In the Phoenix metro area, situated in the Sonoran Desert’s mild climate, I can grow vegetables year round. Among my cool season vegetables, along with greens, radishes, broad beans, beetroot, and turnips, are carrots, which are an easy crop. I am very impatient waiting for the seeds to germinate – they can take up to three weeks – but on my early morning inspection of my garden I am always thrilled to see unmistakable tiny, thin, bright green carrot seedlings poking through. My excitement never fades.  

In the winter of 2020-2021 I tried growing purple carrots. I bought the seeds from Native Seeds/SEARCH in Tucson, Arizona. I was attracted to the name of the variety: dragon. I thinned the seedlings and watched them grow – another waiting game, but one of immense satisfaction.

I like to paint subjects from my garden but had not intended to use the carrots for a painting project. Yet, when I saw their color, I couldn’t resist them. Many had curled or bulbous shapes and extra roots growing out of the primary “carrot-root”. These features might be because I am not an expert grower, but how much more interesting than a common stick-straight washed orange carrot from a store.

I find it fascinating that the purple carrot is orange inside – it was a surprise to me – and I incorporated this view into my composition. I also wanted to include some leaf material because I liked the contrast of the bright green and the purple. The smaller carrot reaches over to its big sister carrot on the right. And the large leaf curls back at a protective angle. These shapes represent how I felt when I was painting. I enjoyed doing the work but felt the need for shelter from the events in the greater world, which were still not wholly understood. The new leaf emerging from the carrot’s top represents its determination to keep growing and reproduce (if only I would allow it).

I worked with a limited palette in drybrush, using my brush almost as a pencil doing many tiny stipples. I found painting the pale, small roots to be challenging because I do not use masking fluid. Instead, I painted around the roots.

Painting subjects from my garden means I have a good supply of “live” material, which is satisfying. Plus, I get to enjoy their taste once the painting is done!

Armenian Cucumber

Cucumis melo var. flexuosus

From late June to late September the Sonoran Desert continues to heat up with temperatures reaching 105F and even 110F or more. Summer monsoon storms provide some relief and help alleviate the need for irrigation of my vegetable garden but after 34 years of living in Phoenix, I am convinced these storms are rarer now and of lesser intensity.

In my summer garden, I grow basil, native sunflowers (with small heads on numerous branches), molokhia (Egyptian spinach), eggplant, occasionally melons, sometimes cowpeas, and always Armenian cucumbers. My subject, Cucumis melo var.  flexuosus, originates in southeastern Anatolia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Palestine, and Central Asia. Today, it is an important vegetable throughout the Middle East, northern Africa, and India (Mariod et al. 2017). Although it looks and tastes like a cucumber, one of its common names is snake melon, and it is a variety of muskmelon (Cucumis melo), which is closely related to cucumber (Cucumis sativus). People have cultivated the many domesticated melons for thousands of years. Medicinally, according to Mariod et al. (2017), the fruit of Cucumis melo var. flexuosus can be used as a skin cleanser or moisturizer. The seed promotes digestion, and can be prepared for use as a cough suppressant, an antipyretic, and a vermifuge (an agent that destroys or expels parasitic worms).

Armenian cucumber thrives in the heat. I don’t need to provide it artificial shade. Although the Phoenix sun is very fierce, I find the best kind of shade is the filtered shade given by my sunflowers.

Cucumis melo var. flexuosus is pollinated by insects. I allow some basil to flower, and the basil and sunflowers attract pollinators like native solitary bees, honeybees, flower flies, and Sonoran bumble bees. Lacewings, crab spiders, praying mantises, and wasps are predators, along with birds and two species of lizard. Various beetles and thousands (millions?) of ants also call my garden home. Lesser goldfinches love the sunflower seeds. I hope for a good balance of creatures to help my garden thrive. I use no pesticides and encourage my plants with compost and the occasional treatment of fish fertilizer. As summer progresses my garden becomes jungle-like.

Each summer morning at around 5:30 am, regardless of the heat (sometimes it is 90F because of the city’s heat island effect), I inspect my long, narrow raised garden and check that my plants are healthy and well-watered. I look for cucumbers. Because they are the same color as the plant’s leaves, the fruits are hard to spot. Occasionally I will not see a cucumber until it is quite enormous – they can grow three feet long – and I wonder how ever did I miss that when it’s right in front of my nose? It’s best to pick the fruits when they are small. Of course, I want them to grow to sufficient size to make a salad, so once I spot one, I make a note of exactly where it is (it can “disappear” because of its camouflage) and monitor it day by day, hoping no creatures (occasionally rats?) nibble it.

I adore these fruits. They are a special benefit of my summer garden. So much more delicious than the store-bought boring dark green cucumbers (no doubt picked a couple of weeks before they reach the shelves)! I never need to peel Armenian cucumbers. Crisp, refreshing, and juicy, they have a wonderful mild taste. And even though I grow them on trellises, what tantalizing shapes they still form! Here was a curled one that just had to be painted. Notice in my depiction that the cucumber also has many ridges – when sliced, each slice has  pretty decorative edges.

I fell in love with my specimen because of its gentle shape and because it still had remains of the blossom at the tip as well as leaves attached close to where it met the stem. My painting is done life-size. My composition is simple: the subject as hero. The most challenging parts of the painting were creating the form through light and shadow as well as counting the ridges to make sure I depicted them accurately. I worked very slowly in drybrush to facilitate this.

I hope that upon seeing my painting, viewers will be encouraged to be adventurous and seek out this fruit. I hope people will either grow Armenian cucumbers in their gardens or find them in a store – in Phoenix, they can sometimes be found in international supermarkets that cater to people from the Middle East, Mediterranean, India, and Africa.

Reference

Mariod, A.A., Mirghani, M.E.S. and Hussein, I., eds. Unconventional Oilseeds and Oil Sources. Academic Press, 2017.

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Read more about this artist's work: 27th Annual