Flora Nova: Painting Nature Now

Flora Nova: Painting Nature Now brought together recent work by five artists who each regard the natural world in their own way: Rose Frantzen, Lara Call Gastinger, Sarah Margaret Gibson, Alex Merritt and Katie Whipple. They were invited by the Sugarlift team and guest curator Peter Trippi, editor-in-chief of Fine Art Connoisseur, who co-curated the show and noted that the show offers "a thrilling snapshot of the possibilities being explored by artists who not only see but feel their fertile subject matter."

All five are immersed in a deep, ongoing dialogue with nature, yet their approaches are little alike. Frantzen's Thistle Series spans eight feet square on 25 oil panels, and Merritt's Silent Morning, a path through a summer garden, is eight feet wide. Gastinger showed close watercolor studies of a magnolia leaf, a leek and an artichoke; Gibson a still life in the Dutch manner and two small tulip studies; and Whipple her painting Angels for Giotto, hung with four small studies of brugmansia, the angel's trumpet. Between them the works held the beauty and intricacy of botanical forms, and glimpses of decay and of nature's capacity for enchantment, mystery, even danger.

Two walls were painted a deep green for the show, one for the title and Gibson's still life, the other for Merritt's canvas. The exhibition text ended on a note of urgency: climate change is causing many species of flora to disappear, which is all the more reason to marvel at those that remain and to pass their visual and emotional power on to future generations.