Story behind the art of Katya Shiova

28th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists and Marin Art & Garden Center

White Comet Orchid

Angraecum dryadum

I am fascinated by the history of the formation of botany as a science and botanical illustration as its integral part. Those times before the era of photography left us incredible herbaria collected in the most remote corners of the earth, so amazing that they seemed like paradise on earth, and albums of illustrations, in which each work involved dozens of hours of viewing the subject and skillful transfer to paper.

A turning point in the study of the plant world was the arrival of nine boxes to London from Rio de Janeiro in 1818. The sender was William Swainson, and in the boxes were Mexican plants, previously unseen by Europeans. This was not the first such shipment, but it was the contents of one of the boxes that turned European science upside down - a plain rhizome blossomed with a purple flower of alien beauty. Thus, a tropical orchid, a beautiful representative of the genus Cattleya, made its first journey across the ocean and caused orchid fever, which went down in history as "orchidelirium.”

Orchidelirium captivated all naturalists of the time, including Charles Darwin. In one of his letters to the botanist and his close friend Joseph Dalton Hooker in January 1862, he wrote about an orchid: "Good Heavens what insect can suck it." Darwin was impressed by its extremely long nectary* and put forward a theory about the existence of an insect with a long proboscis to pollinate these beautiful flowers. He was right in his hypothesis - in 1903, a species of moth with a proboscis of about 30 cm was discovered in Madagascar by Walter Rothschild and Karl Jordan. This confirmed Darwin's prediction. The moth was named Xanthopan morganii praedicta. It is possible that the subspecific epithet praedicta was given in honor of the fact that Darwin predicted its existence. I adore insects; entomological illustration is half of my work; therefore, I could not pass by such a wonderful story. I started to read more about long spurred orchids.

Angraecum, also known as comet orchid, is a genus of the family Orchidaceae native to tropical and South Africa, as well as Sri Lanka. It contains 223 species. I started looking for images to choose my future subject. One of the first things I found was an illustration that appeared in a volume of Frederick Sander’s Reichenbachia from 1888 by Henry Moon - I was delighted with how the flexible, long nectaries created the effect of flight. At that moment I decided that I had to draw one of the representatives of this genus. I wanted to accent the dancing nectaries; they look so light and create the impression of a breeze blowing inside the picture. I tried to convey this in my artwork.

I love shades of green. I am fascinated by how green is created in watercolor, so my Angraecum dryadum is made without the use of green pigments, exclusively by combining one yellow and blue with the addition of violet and magenta. As a basis for my greens, I took William Hooker's classic formula: Prussian blue + gamboge. Watercolor from natural gamboge is no longer produced, so I replaced it with the most suitable substitute color, nickel azomethine yellow PY150. It seemed a good idea to me to turn to the classic botanical palette in my work.

*In botany, a nectary is a plant gland that produces and secretes nectar. All representatives of genus Angraecum have a long spur at the back of the labellum (lip) – it’s a distinctive feature characteristic of species from this genus.

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