Story behind the art of Gaye Grossman

28th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists and Marin Art & Garden Center

Blackberry

Rubus cv.

I love to bake. In early December 2024, I was grocery shopping with the goal of finding some fresh berries to make a torte. This was a big ask considering the time of year, but the blackberries happened to look wonderful and I snapped up a few containers. One of the berries even had some green sepals and multicolored drupelets. Those drupelets weren’t the usual dull, flat shades you normally see; they were translucent and almost glowing. All thoughts of baking went out the window and I knew I had to tackle this blackberry on paper.

I had recently been experimenting with pan pastels on sanded paper for a few different subjects, and I was very happy with the gently textured results. I thought this blackberry might lend itself well to the thinly layered tones of the pastels, which create such soft, underlying forms. Because my image is large, about ten times the size of my subject blackberry, I was able to have some fun adding all the details with both wax- and oil-based colored pencils.

Fun is the key word here. It was a joy to see how each part of my blackberry evolved with each new layer to eventually make the whole.

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