Art Sync: That Takes the Cake

Elizabeth Johnson: Your botanical watercolor paintings are loaded with beauty and densely packed with mindful, accurate detail. In an email you said, "I have a penchant for drawing plants because the color range, density differences, shapes, and peculiarities change from year to year. Plus, they become my forever friends when I draw and paint them." Did you study botanical drawing at Moore College of Art & Design? At PAFA? How do you collect the plants you paint? Do you grow them? Do you generally alternate between portraits and botanicals?

Joan Becker: I have not studied botanical drawing. I collect roadside, field, and bedded plants from my garden. My botanicals are observed, and detailed. Pieces of knock-out color placed next to each other within a web of plants provide daily excitement and interest in painting. I am a long-distance swimmer, which requires the same breathless attention to detail, focus, and discipline; and it is also, of course, meditative. Ultimately, both are indulgences in an ethereal space.

EJ: The drama of empty space in your botanicals is the exact opposite of dramatizing portrait subjects by surrounding them with detailed environments. In this sense, your whole body of work harnesses copious detail to emphasize both the presence and absence of humans. In an email you mention that you "love to paint people. I love chatting with them in the studio. I get lonely in the studio so having folks pose keeps away the loneliness. Some of the same nouns apply to the people as applied to the plants."

I take this to mean that plants can feel as engaging as people, and people elicit as much awe for their variation and mutability as plants. Is the fact that plants can't observe you a chief determinant for the mood difference between your botanicals and your portraits?

JB: Alas, plants don’t engage in conversation; hence, the relationship is silent and focused. To spend time with people is a great joy. There is a special relationship created between the model and the painter. Life stories and ideas are shared, which is a great privilege.

EJ: Historical botanical artists such as Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566), Sydney Parkinson (1745-1771), Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759-1840), and Pandora Sellars (1936-2017) painted carefully composed specimens on a white background. What does your work retain from historical botany painting? And since you're a fine artist, what liberties do you take that a botanical artist wouldn't?

JB: Historic botanical artists share a primitive depiction of plant structure that is very authentic and sincere, sometimes even fantastical. Often my work incorporates this naiveté. My paintings compose the weave of plants––the maze and hidden places.

EJ: On your website biography you describe beginning painting as: "Sometimes an idea appears out of the blue, other times it is observed. Everyday activities, past experiences, daydreams, literature, music and art feed thought. Possibilities are sketched, models are drawn, colors are tested, and art museums and books are visited."

JB: I rarely overlay watercolor. There are some overlaps and there are quite a few bleeds. If I did overlay, the color would be slightly dulled, not as intense, not as saturated; hence, the image would be too ethereal for my earthy tastes. Since the composition is not sketched, after arriving at the right side of the paper I go back in and complete areas that are compositionally incomplete or tuck in a plant behind another plant. This is when I check the composition as a whole and make sure it works. The closer the piece is to completion the more sit and look time it requires.

EJ: Is ethereal associated with dulled and less intense color?

JB: Probably a better word is: dreamy. For the overlaps to work well, the colors are usually applied thinly to create a third color. One color is laid down and allowed to dry, and then another color is applied, either partially or totally on top of the first color. If the process is done with dense and/or dark color, it often loses its brilliance.

EJ: Your website biography addresses the relationship between viewer and painting: pleasure and long-term enjoyment are key for you. I sense you blend a strong instinct to observe nature with just as strong design invention. In fact, it is the uncanny, fluid ideation of nature that excites me about your work.

EJ: You create vortexes or hollows that bring overall pattern into an almost Art Nouveau resolution. I recall, for instance, Alphonse Mucha, the internationally successful Czech painter and designer of posters, theater sets, and programs, costumes, and jewelry. He made portraits of Sarah Bernhardt.

Could you think of your portraits Jenny In The Swamp, and The Rose in terms of Art Nouveau aesthetic?

JB: Most of the work considered to be Art Nouveau is illustrative. The artists often work from imagined imagery that is outlined, stock, and awash with romantic themes. The artists’ high-keyed color interests me, and I admire, among others: Tiffany, Parrish, and Pyle.

EJ: Both the botanical pieces you sent me and portraits Julie And Joey and Jenny In The Swamp contrast wintery, dark or pale bits of design with more summery, colorful blossoming ones, and the viewer unconsciously absorbs nature and the person within as bridging many seasons. I love the abstract decoration behind the portrait of Thom with his bike in The Cowboy and in the woman's dress in At The Soothsayer. What does it feel like to switch from portraits that suggest personality in the design to "allover-design" botanicals? Are personalities of people and plants aligned as analogous challenges with the show title Pursue?

Joan Becker: Pursue

January 17 - February 15, 2025

From an early age, Joan Becker was exposed to a love of art and nature. Her father, a painter, introduced her to drawing tools and to observational figure drawing. While in high school, Becker modeled for life classes and worked as a draftswoman for the state of New York. At the same time, her home in upstate New York afforded her the opportunity to explore the beauty of the open fields and woods. These experiences, along with many museum visits, paved her way to Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia.

After graduation, Joan joined the Fairmount Park Commission where she oversaw the environmental centers - an array of historic houses, and special facilities such as the Fairmount Water Works and Japanese House and Garden. Her interest in environmental concerns led her to a career in this field with Weston Technologies, which she left eighteen years ago to enroll at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.