The Botanical Series

“A hallmark of Marcia Gygli King’s landscape paintings of the past decade has been the dynamism of her transcription of the forms which occur in the natural world to the language of brush and paint medium - in essence, the creation of a world in dramatic flux. She has spoken of her “translating nature into energy and force”.

Several years ago, two occurances in her life began to effect an unplanned transformation of her paintings. First, she began to spend time in a newly acquired home with an opulent flower garden on the South Fork of Long Island (New York). Taking advantage of this profusion of color and form surrounding her, she began to paint the specific flowers and leaves, concentrating on both pattern and coloration. The second object lesson took the form of a chance encounter with a small number of works by the legendary English botanical artist, Dr. Robert Thornton. So captivated was she by one of his acknowledged masterpieces, Night Blooming Cerus (1800), that she acquired the print, which now resides as both inspiration and talisman outside her SoHo studio door.

The recent paintings, titled collectively The Botanical Series, are process-oriented works. The artist has translated the white surround of the traditional botanical illustration to a vigorously brushed field white strokes on a ground of intensely dark green [verging upon black]. Upon this field of altered white rest the vigorous forms and colors of genera of flora which have caught her fancy - “obsessively depicted” [the artist’s characterization!] in her effort to capture the detailed realities of the subject - but and as important for her, to attempt to also recapture the energy and tangible excitement of botanical illustrations earlier in those of this century, in which the thrill of seeing newly discovered species from exotic and previously unexplored parts of the globe was passed from explorere/scientist to artist/illustrator to interested layperson/viewer.

Lastly, it is important to note that Ms King has invoked the large scale of post-World War II abstract painting to bring a freshness of spirit and to re-energize a much-loved, centuries-old tradition of capturing the transitory beauty of flowers through the skills oand materials of the painter. “

Michael Walls