Flower power

The seed was planted in artist Gilly Shaeffer’s mind in 1994 to do

floral illustration.

That interest continues to blossom today as she and other

botanical artists have joined to share their realistic paintings and

drawings with viewers in Burbank and across the country.

Shaeffer, a Mount Washington resident, is immediate past president

of the Botanical Artists Guild of Southern California, which she and

seven other artists founded it in 1997. Today, the group has 64

members and is a chapter of the American Society of Botanical

Artists, a group of more than 1,000 artists, scholars and art

collectors, headquartered in New York City.

The organization promotes awareness of this tradition that is

centuries old, members said.

Members of the Southern California group are showing their work

this month at the Creative Arts Center Gallery in Burbank. To give

viewers some background on the art form, the group will have a

lecture workshop on Oct. 22.

Shaeffer’s foray into the art form started when she enrolled in a

floral illustration course at the Huntington Library and Gardens in

Pasadena.

“I’ve always been interested in art and gardening and love flowers

and looking at flowers and doing floral arrangements,” she said. “I

thought it would be fun to learn how to illustrate plants. It wasn’t

easy but I got into it and became hooked on it. First I started doing

pencil drawings, then went onto watercolor.”

She and fellow members of the Huntington Library course started

showing their works together at nurseries and the Arboretum in

Pasadena. Soon, the Southern California chapter was born.

Botanical art, Shaeffer said, is the drawing of a plant that is

realistically correct but artistically pleasing.

Since 1990, there has been a renewal in creating botanical art,

Shaeffer said. The practice goes back to the first century when

people would record information on plants for medicinal use, she

said. “The intricate venation and the petals are so beautifully

formed that it appealed to me to want to draw them,” she said. “The

beauty I saw in the plant made me want to represent it so I got into

it.

Nancy Boyarsky of Los Angeles joined the Southern California group

in 2001. She serves as the publicity chairwoman and has five pieces

in the exhibit at the Creative Arts Center. Of the five pieces, her

very favorite, is the cereus peruvianus -- a night-blooming cactus

done in watercolor.

The process of painting a botanical artwork is very slow, Boyarsky

said.

“It takes several weeks to do a watercolor because you do several

layers of paint to capture the detail,” she said. “You want to create

something people want to refer to if they want to know what it looks

like, but you edit out extra branches and extraneous detail that

wouldn’t add to the composition.”

A botanical artist also has to know a little bit of botany to know

what is going on with the plant, Boyarsky said.

“The artist pays attention to the shape of the leaf, how it’s

attached to the stem, the different parts of the plants that

propagate seeds, and how it attracts pollinators that will carry the

pollen to the next blossom,” she said. This exhibit is quite unique

compared to the usual ones at the Creative Arts Center Gallery, said

its director Frances Santistevan of Glendale. The usual shows, she

said, are one-man/one-woman and combination of group shows of

paintings, ceramics and sculpture. This exhibit’s paintings are of

fruits, like melons and avocados, flowers, plants, a lot of

succulents and cactus.

“They almost look like photographs, the artists are so attentive

to detail, she said. “They look like you can just reach out and touch

them.”

One of her favorite pieces is just inside the gallery door.

“It’s of calla lilies -- they are white with big green leaves.

It’s just beautiful,” she said.

FYI

WHO: Botanical Artists Guild of Southern California

WHAT: “Inspired by Nature: Paintings and Drawings by Botanical

Artists.”

WHEN: 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Friday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday until Oct. 27.

WHERE: Creative Arts Center Gallery, 1100 W. Clark Ave., Burbank

BONUS: Opening reception will be from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday and a

lecture/workshop will be from 1 to 4 p.m. Oct. 22 with a fee of $25

CONTACT: (818) 238-5397