Nothing is more inspirational to the gardener or the painter than a trip to the Botanical Gardens. I'm an avid gardener. Ever since I bought my first house I began landscaping and found it very enjoyable. The thing that surprised me the most was that the vocabulary for the botanical artist and the painter was the same. Texture, form, color, balance, harmony. It was the same thing, but on a much bigger scale, and there was a living quality to the medium that couldn't be predicted. Times of day or year or different weather would make the designs change color and texture, even simply moving through the landscape changes the composition. Ever since, I've loved plants and gardening.
January for the gardener is a boring month. You sift through catalogs and plan out all the work you're going to do in the spring. So today my family and I took our afternoon and wandered through tropical jungles in humid 80 degree weather while outside it is in the single digits tonight. The New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx is one of our favorites places to hang out on a cold day. As a painter I think of Monet and Gauguin. I would love to paint in there. A great way to great to break up the monotonous stark grayness of winter.
Enjoy
WOC
©2011 William O'Connor Studios
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