Plant Broadcasts

 

Plants are a big part of my world. My tiny tower-like house sits in the embrace of a massive pohutukawa tree with an under-storey of sub-tropical plantings, my income has been from selling plants or writing about people who grow them, most of my diet is plant based, and increasingly.....I'm painting them. 

There's a palpable spring vibe in the air here now, even in our evergreen sub-tropical north with its less defined seasons, and even amid unpredictable lockdown levels. Germinating seedlings are bursting through the earth and fresh green growth epitomize the irrepressible uplift that is spring. Plants pick up on the seasonal broadcast then relay their literal live-stream to the world around them. But they're also receiver-transmitters of something more subtle and broad spectrum than the obvious changes in day-length and temperature. And it feels good.

 

 

The Seedling is a watercolour painting I did years ago that speaks of the dance between a germinating seedling, the gardener that nurtures it, and the greater global context. And because I love metaphor, the seedling symbolizes whatever our newest tender life-shoot may be. An idea. A project. A new resolve or promise. A global change. A cherished relationship. To take root and thrive, that new life-shoot needs nurturing and feeding until it is independent enough to sustain itself and send and receive its own broadcasts out in the world.

 

 

 

The Wood Wide Web. Because plants can't move around, they have to attract what they need by becoming what they're born to be. Whether plants need nutrients or pollinators or protection from predators, they put out for they want or what they can offer to others, and it seems they have sophisticated communication systems to help them. Like us, their internal chemistry can adapt to changes in environmental conditions, and recent discoveries show that, also like us, they can dialogue between neighbours and communities. They share information via vast underground networks of fine fungal threads called mycelia, as well as by airborne transmission of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and these systems are so complex that some scientists have dubbed them 'the internet of plants' or 'the wood wide web'.

My guess is we need to add electro-magnetic transmission into the mix. To this end there's an exciting new field of study called plant neurobiology which looks at how plants' signalling systems are integrated, their sensitivities, and what their means of perception might be. Check it out.

 

 

I painted The Cactus Chorus specifically to suit this funky frame I found in a second-hand treasure trove, and the prickly stems are in full broadcast mode. Once the cactus was on the canvas in its cute clay pot, it clearly found its voice and had something to say that fills the surrounding environs and beyond. As well as sending out, this botanical aerial is perfectly tuned to receive incoming broadcasts from its own cactus channel. 

 

 

 

Similar energy fields are in most of my paintings, but oddIy I don't see them. Several of us are sensitive in different ways to nature's biofields and broadcasts, and it feels I'm tuned to download subtle patterns of info and then translate them into a visual language for us to relate to and enjoy. The invisible made visible. The people who recently bought this painting came out to the studio to collect another one, but they clearly resonated with this cactus vibe because it went home in the car with them too.

And there are babies. We sold a lot of small cacti/succulents in the garden centre where I worked until recently and they've inspired several super-cute mini paintings that are great as a set or as a tiny-mighty on their own.

            

 

With the fresh focus of spring and the exuberance of our local sub-tropical flowers and foliage, I can feel more plant inspired paintings gestating.