Story behind the art of Jane Fournier

29th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists and the Society of Illustrators

Prickly Rosehips

Rosa acicularis

This is one of two species of native rose common in the forest areas where I live in Montana. I enjoy their delicate pink flowers on my early summer hikes, but despite my best efforts I have yet to complete a painting of the blooms. However, to my mind, the rose hips that present their glowing red and orange colors in the late summer and early fall are just as lovely and, conveniently for the artist, longer lived than the fragile flowers.

Rose hips are also fascinating as one of the many different containers that plants produce to nurture, protect, and eventually disperse their seeds. First and foremost, seed containers are exquisitely functional, even though we delight in the beauty of their intricate architecture and canny engineering. In the many rose hips that I had to dissect to gain a full understanding of the structure, I marveled at how the many individual fruits were nestled inside the hip and that the vestigial traces of the long-gone flower were easily visible when magnified.

While the rose hip composition was forming in my mind and before I had committed it to paper, I was searching for something among my art materials and stumbled on this slightly textured, honey-colored piece of calf vellum. Immediately I knew that the warm tones of this particular piece would be perfect to highlight the warm glow of color in the subject. With a little bit of adjustment, I was able to fit all the pieces harmoniously onto the sheet.

Next Story

Back to List