Bougainvilleas - Baret's Bossa

I’ve long been fascinated by Bougainvilleas, particularly the variation in their intense, vibrant blooms which are not flowers but leaves known as bracts. I have around twenty growing in my garden.

My drawings of these extraordinary plants have developed through close lens photography allowing me to select, edit and arrange compositions. Working with pastel I draw directly with colour - line and shape can be fluidly defined, intersecting and interacting across the paper. Working from a photograph, details can be scrutinized while other areas can be largely simplified.

One of my great inspirations to produce an extended drawing series of Bougainvilleas is the remarkable story of Jeanne Baret, assistant to Philibert Commerson the botanist to admiral and explorer Louis de Bougainville, who led the first French expedition to circumnavigate the entire globe (1766-1769). As a member of Bougainville’s ship’s company on this voyage, Baret became the first recorded woman to do the same. Baret was a gifted herbalist whose quest to discover, catalogue and study new plants was motivated by an interest in their medicinal rather than floral properties.

Around 200 years later, on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, where Baret and Commerson discovered the Bougainvillea, the great Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobim, along with others, developed the Bossa Nova from the Samba - their distinctive rhythms, that often filled my studio as the series developed, are as intrinsic to Rio's Carnival as the colours of Bougainvilleas.

So, celebrate the season and enjoy the 'carnival' of drawings on the wall.