About the ArtistRaised by artists, Tessa has been drawing since she could first hold a pencil, seeing the world through the lens of a maker and finding creative intuition in her hands. In studying botany and natural history, she began discovering the world all over again through new eyes and finding new subjects for her art. Her work lives in this meeting space between art and natural science, creativity and careful observation.
Tessa has a bachelor's degree in Natural History from Sterling College, and has years of experience teaching and sharing her love of plants through nature-based education programs. Her work has been shown in galleries including the Woodstock Artist's Association and Museum, The Arts Upstairs, the Shandaken Artist's Studio Tour, and the Community Arts Network of Oneonta, Publications include cover and centerfold artwork for the "Journal of Medicinal Plant Conservation" (2017), and artwork for the "Medicinal Plants of the Northeast Coloring Book" (2017). Artist's Statement
I like to think of botanical illustration as the work of translating life to paper. There's a kind of seeing and a knowing there that requires multiple glasses - those of an artist and those of a naturalist. It's seeing form and light and line, while also knowing how to see the structures and patterns that make each plant so perfectly and uniquely itself. In this way, I find that drawing plants allows me to learn them more thoroughly-- their habits and contours, their minute and unique parts etched in memory so that I can know them without effort or recital. I learn them unequivocally, like old friends. My hope is to capture something of both the details and the character that makes each plant distinctively itself.
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