Story behind the art of Catherine Park
29th Annual International
American Society of Botanical Artists and the Society of Illustrators
Wild Blackberries
Rubus allegheniensis
I started this project with all the enthusiasm of a first-time camper plunging into the woods on a sunny morning, brimming with naivete and hubris. I wish I could chalk it all up to youth, but I was 57 at the time.
This was spring of 2024. I came across a massive wild blackberry bramble behind a neglected vegetable garden in an obscure part of my yard. I thought, “Aha! This will be perfect! I’ll document it all summer, all its life stages, and then I’ll paint it for Botanical Art Worldwide.” Deadline: October 3. Months and months of time!
The first part, the documenting, was fun and easy. I went out with my phone regularly, and took pictures of it blooming, brilliant green leaves unfurling, canes draping all over themselves and the dilapidated fence. I took pictures on cloudy days for even light, and bright days for stark light. I cut sprigs and brought them into my studio and put them on white backgrounds and took pictures with controlled light from the upper left. I made sketches and studies. I tested out paint combinations. I watched blackberry how-to painting videos. I printed photos and taped them on the giant six-foot-square light table that looms over my workspace. (This I bought for $100 from a church muralist who needed to move.) By late July I had every stage from the earliest flower buds to full blown flowers to baby berries to fully ripe berries to the blank receptacles they leave behind.
I began to try to compose a painting to make sense of what was a massive, chaotic tangle and infinite possibilities. I think if you had come upon me at that time, you might have been concerned: here is a mad woman with an unhealthy blackberry obsession. Every surface in my studio was covered in cut out photos of blackberries, tracing paper sketches assembled into compositions, and failed ideas littering the floor. This went on for several weeks.
A turning point came one day when I printed a photo that I had taken in bright sun, with many of the blackberries and leaves backlit. I loved the drupelets illuminated from behind and how the light hit each berry, and each part of each berry, from a different angle. A shaft of sunlight came down the middle of the bramble, marking the leaves with dappled light. I noticed that the shiny parts of the blackberries reflected light from the elements around them - green leaves made green reflections, and red berries nearby made some of the dark drupelets glow red. Then I noticed one particular berry that was perfectly ripe, inky dark, but jutting forward into brilliant sunlight so that each drupelet was almost white. This particular berry seemed to be not so much reflecting light as radiating it. Sparkles refracted in all directions.
I think most botanical artists will understand this feeling: I fell deeply in love with a berry.
“Aha!” I said, “This will be my focal point.”
I placed it in a classic “rule of threes” location on the lower right and built the rest of the criss-crossing canes, overlapping leaves, and berries in all stages around that. Then I tipped the whole thing 30 degrees or so to the right, so it began to resemble something like a spinning baton, rotating clockwise. I traced all this onto a sheet of creamy, pristine 300 pound Saunders Waterford hot press, and thought, “Thank God the hard part is done!”
It was only August 15 or so, and I had six weeks left for painting. By this point, my family had already begun to tire of the project. “If I hear the word ‘drupelet’ one more time…” my husband complained. “When will it be done?” asked my sons. “I’m doing great!” I insisted, ever optimistic.
My fascination with these blackberries was both my entire motivation and my downfall. I had to capture it all. Each wrinkle in each leaf, each part of a wrinkle, each part of the shadow of a wrinkle, each thorn, each bug nibble. I worked wearing reading glasses and gazing through a large powerful magnifying glass. Time is a flat circle. I lost myself entirely, toiling away each day for as long as my eyes and shoulders could tolerate. October 3 approached — I was at best 20 percent done. I thought maybe I should just erase the other 80% and make it work as a much much smaller piece. But I couldn’t part ways with the berry I loved and it was way down on the lower third.
A miracle occurred in late September — we got a three-week extension! Now I was sure I could do it. “Get your butt in the chair and finish it!” scolded my college age son. “Stop fooling around!” admonished the other, a high school student. “Just please stop— it has to be good enough by now,” added my husband. I looked at them all in confusion and dismay. I was in the chair all the possible time. I wasn’t fooling around at all. I was just very, very, very slow. With three extra weeks— I could definitely make it.
But the three weeks flew by, and it was still very far from done. In fact, it was clearly hopeless. I was upset and disappointed in myself, but I had to let it go. I could not submit it for consideration in Botanical Art Worldwide. The deadline came and went. I wasted a few days stewing in my defeat.
After an appropriate mourning period, I returned to the easel and got back to work. I continued to toil all through the long dark winter. Short days, bitter cold, and a hundred-yard hike through knee deep snow to my studio each morning. At some point, word reached me that the UK’s Society of Botanical Artists had a call for entries for their Plantae exhibition in summer 2025. Deadline: Valentine’s Day. I set my sights on that and redoubled my efforts.
The finished portion of the painting steadily spread downward, the pencil drawing gradually consumed by watercolor. It never got easier or faster. The final week in mid-February I was putting in ten hour days. Even then, two hours before I had to submit it - was that UK time or my time? - I was adding berries in the background and making last minute Hail Mary changes.
The painting did get into that show, and my husband and I flew over to London to see it, which was a treat. I think the outward success made me seem less insane and more just obsessively dedicated.
The painting went across the pond and came back. It sat wrapped in a well travelled corrugated package for months in the corner of my studio while I toiled on sunflowers. I noticed that ASBA had a call for entries for their 29th Annual International, a deadline that was easy to meet because the painting was already done. I was pleased and honored that they accepted it into this elite exhibition.
What I learned from “Wild Blackberries” is to estimate the time I will need for any new project — and then round up by about four months.
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