When people think of endangered species, what comes to mind first are animals. But plants are even more critical to the balance of every ecosystem because they often provide the food and habitat for animals and insects that rely on them to survive. Yet their plight in our current environmental and climate change crisis hasn’t received as much attention, which is one reason I wanted to paint them. I consider them “plant portraits” with a deeper meaning living in the narrative of the subjects who are threatened or nearly extinct due to habitat loss from agricultural and urban development, cattle grazing, wildfire, and climate change.

I researched how plants had been depicted in the past and became fascinated by botanical prints and paintings from the 17th – 19th centuries when artists would travel with scientists making their work “in situ” as new plant species were being discovered and documented.  I painted this series in the style of these botanical paintings because I liked the conceptual resonance between the idea that it was used to show the discovery of new plant species and now using it to depict the decline and extinction of plant species.

Plants play such a vital role in our ecosystem; they are at the foundation and core of supporting life as we have known it. My goal with this series has been to bring attention to these threatened native species and consider the consequences of their loss, because each loss is like losing a piece of life’s foundation.

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