botanical artist

New Artwork: Incursion

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As was the case with my last new artwork, I began this painting while in residency at BROTA and the Buenos Aires Botanical Garden but didn’t finish it until now! It’s another painting of the water hyacinth - an attractive plant that due to human spread is now an invasive menace.

My first painting of this plant, Adrift, is intentionally more flat and graphic. It focuses on shape, color, and contour. In this painting, I wanted to add more realism through volume, depth, detail, and light via water reflection. The substrate is another beautiful handmade paper by Ato Menegazzo Papeles in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

This is Incursion, acrylic on artisanal handmade paper, 19.5x15.5”, 2023.

Shelby Prindaville's second painting of a water hyacinth.

New Artwork: Adrift

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Every artist has a few pieces they’ve started but not yet finished… and then time passes. Some of them kick around for months or years before they get picked back up again - if they ever do!

This painting is a piece I began during my 2019 Argentinian artist residency at BROTA and the Buenos Aires Botanical Garden. I got it quite close to being finished at the time, but there were a few touches left to add… and upon my return to the US, I shifted focus to moving houses and beginning the next school year, then COVID hit… and I just never returned to it until recently!

This is a painting of a water hyacinth, which is simultaneously a beautiful tropical aquatic plant native to South America and also a globally invasive scourge. In places where it can withstand the winters, it quickly multiplies until it covers all the available surface area of bodies of water. In doing so, it not only crowds out other, native surface plants and can make surface transportation difficult (for both people and wildlife), but it also shades out the underwater ecosystem. Along with many other territories, it is an invasive plant in the US Southeast, and at one point the US Congress considered but ultimately didn’t pass a bill to introduce hippopotamus to Louisiana to help manage the water hyacinth population.

This is Adrift, acrylic on artisanal handmade paper, 19.25x14.5”, 2023.

"Adrift" water hyacinth painting by artist Shelby Prindaville.

BROTA and Buenos Aires Series "Gardens of Memory" Dried Sweetgum Leaf

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This is one of my favorite new pieces from this summer’s BROTA residency in the Buenos Aires Botanical Gardens! It’s a mixed media piece including a methylcellulose transfer of a photograph I took of a Monstera deliciosa collaged atop a dried sweetgum leaf (Liquidambar styraciflua). The support is handmade artisanal paper from Ato Menegazzo Papeles.

BROTA and Buenos Aires Series "Gardens of Memory" NOID Leaf Skeleton

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Information is power. I try to ID all of the species I work with, as each species is important and adds layers of meaning and interest to my pieces. Accuracy is equally important however - randomly guessing at species IDs does more harm than good, in my opinion. The first leaf skeleton piece I shared with you, which incorporated a sacred fig or Ficus religiosa leaf skeleton, was identifiable due to its very specific and unusual shape. In this NOID leaf skeleton, however, the shape alone does not sufficiently distinguish the leaf from other trees in the Buenos Aires Botanical Garden. Since it is a skeleton, I also cannot use leaf color, texture, weight, and/or attached branches or flowers to contribute more identification information. Though I researched for some time hoping to find a conclusive match, I eventually had to concede that I cannot definitively identify the leaf species which is what makes it a NOID (a term we use in plant identification that - perhaps obviously - stands for no identification).

This artwork is mixed media including a NOID skeleton leaf, matte medium, and handmade artisanal paper and is 12.5x9.75” (unframed dimensions).

BROTA and Buenos Aires Series "Transmigration Landscapes"

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I had my chromatography series Transmigration Landscapes framed right before moving, and so I’ve taken the time to photograph the pieces in their final form! From this Buenos Aires Botanical Garden collection, there are seven framed pieces each containing five loosely grouped chromatography plant portraits. The framed dimensions are 8.875x30”.

These are, in order:
Transmigration Landscapes : Arc
Transmigration Landscapes: Atmosphere
Transmigration Landscapes: Cadence
Transmigration Landscapes: Flare
Transmigration Landscapes: Percussive
Transmigration Landscapes: Reflective
Transmigration Landscapes: Vibration

BROTA and Buenos Aires Series "Gardens of Memory" Sacred Fig Skeleton

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This is one of my favorites (I have several!) of my new pieces from this residency - it’s perfect in its deceptive simplicity. I say deceptive because work went into obtaining the components of this piece, from learning how to make banana paper while on residency in Peru, to sifting through hundreds of fallen leaves in the Buenos Aires Botanical Garden before finding this perfect leaf skeleton specimen, to discovering that the two suited each other beautifully.

This artwork is mixed media including a Ficus religiosa skeleton leaf, matte medium, and handmade banana paper and is 17x11” (unframed dimensions).