Susan Durisek’s blog

I’m often overcome by the urge to slow down, look more closely at little things, and examine the natural world around me.  That’s why I’m glad to hear artist Olivia Marie Braida-Chiusano is returning to The Arboretum on Alumni Drive to hold a 4-day watercolor workshop, August 23-7.

In this digital age, where images are created by machines using electronic impulses with mathematical precision, it seems an anachronism to celebrate the low-tech act of a person pulling paint across paper.  Yet that is just what Olivia finds fascinating.  Discovering the study of botanical art in the French court tradition set her on a course of learning, researching, creating and teaching the act of making realistic images of plants and even insects.  She has visited London, and gained access to original drawings by the Viennese Bauer brothers that date from the late 1700s, and the Lindley Library to study William Hooker’s art; in Paris, her attention turned to a collection of illustrations known collectively as the Vélins du Roi, from naturalist Daniel Rabel’s early studies in the 1500s to Pierre-Joseph Redouté’s famous roses in the 1800s.  You can see some of her own work at The Academy of Botanical Art.  My first watercolor last year was an artichoke.  This year, I hear they’re working on pears.