I’ve been pondering a question somebody asked a little while ago that has appeared back in to my thoughts, “Do you ever get bored of drawing plants?”. I’m not sure why I’ve started thinking about this now, but maybe it’s something my own mind feels I need to answer now. The short answer is no. In a way, I’m not just drawing plants, I’m taking different elements of plants, insects, sealife, animals etc, and however loosely or closely based on their original sources they may be, I’m combining them into something else entirely. In another way, drawing plants is exactly what I’m doing.
For me this process is much more than studying and illustrating a plant in a way similar to botanical illustrators. While I adopt their methods to an extent, I’m giving myself the artistic license to go beyond illustrating an existing plant specimen, and allowing myself to graft various organisms together into a completely imagined specimen. By omitting real life and scientific limitations, it means I can delve more into the realms of the imaginary and the fantastical with the drawings. It isn’t completely clear if these specimens are plants, animals, or something in between. That is part of the process of creating these hybrids that fascinates me, and drives me to continue to draw and evolve these odd specimens. Considering how they may survive, feed, move around, gain energy, reproduce; these are all things I’ve really begun to think about while creating these drawings.
I started out with this idea by simply drawing them for their aesthetic qualities, drawing these specimens purely because they looked unusual and alien. I hope that during my residency that I moved the idea further along and started to think about what these hybrids are, and why I’m creating them to begin with. During my residency I did this by examining the hybrids as if I was an explorer, encountering these specimens for the first time, and these drawings are the first steps I have taken to study and observe them. How can I develop this further? I could continue examining them as this explorer, going into more and more detail with the specimen “studies”, what the habitat of the specimens could be and which adaptations correspond to which habitat and climate. I could also make this project into something that comments more on our existing world, using it to question our use of science to manipulate genes in plants, such as gene manipulation and modification ; whether its wholly good or could have possible unseen consequences. These specimens could be one of the unforeseen consequences, a possibility in the near future if we continued to genetically modify plants, similar to how Science Fiction is used to present possible futures, however likely or unlikely they may seem.
