Artist of the Month

Peace, Love and Herbs

Johanna Dollerson

www.johannadollerson.com

From the tiniest detail, our Artist of the Month builds intricate and powerful patterns. An artist, craftsperson, Pilates instructor, and organic grower of Lavender (Lavandula spp.) based in Edinburgh and Dorset, Johanna Dollerson received a Diploma in Botanical Illustration from Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. She has since applied her acute attention to detail to producing drawings, watercolours, miniature wreaths, and labyrinthine assemblages of pressed leaves and petals. She also creates sustainable stationery, bespoke garden portraits, and artworks using bouquets.

Johanna writes:

Jacques Cousteau said: "People protect what they love." But first, we need to see.

I am rather short sighted. My first little pair of spectacles opened a new world to me: the innovation, beauty, and delicate strength of plants. It astonished me that Field Speedwell (Veronica persica), growing out of a gloomy pavement crack, could so easily be stepped over and disregarded, instead of being celebrated as marvellous. My work is often a simple attempt to raise a tiny detail from the ground, frame it at eye level, and encourage the viewer to pause and marvel— not at my craft, but at the work of nature, and the irrepressible optimism of growing things.

**English Bluebell, Hyacinthoides non-scripta**
Johanna Dollerson

When I displayed one of my first large arrangements of pressings, a lady stopped and looked at it for so long that I asked her if she was OK. "Yes," she said. "But what does it say?" Her question sums up much of what I hope my work prompts us to ask. What is nature telling us? And more: what does this require of me now?

**Pressed flower greeting card design**
Johanna Dollerson

My work is a small stand against our terminal myopia towards the natural world. My media are, in a sense, anachronistic; traditional botanical illustration in graphite and watercolour, but also plant pressings— aged, faded, bleached, and curled, arranged text-like, or in natural jigsaws. These artforms were widely employed during the golden age of exploration and scientific discovery, but my interest in them stems from the inverse: a foreshadowing of imminent loss from the biosphere, a pre-emptive nostalgia. The urge to create, preserve, and record. To spend time with old friends before they are gone.

**Pressings in progress**
Johanna Dollerson

This may sound rather gloomy, but the process of creation is all joy for me— a meditative labour using the beauty of plants. Considering their delicate strength buoys me, and the way living things look, sound, smell, and feel under my fingertips boosts my health and creativity. As an artist wholly inspired by nature, I feel driven to restore, protect, and promote it all I can, in the best ways I know how. For me, that means making my art while working on the land to earn my living. I hand-craft restorative natural products from the Lavender I grow, following agroecological principles to boost soil health and habitat for pollinators and wildlife. It's labour-intensive and rewarding. My creative work with plants could be called diversification; really, it's part of a reciprocal relationship. Nourished land nourishes people— their health, their communities, their creativity. Small farms that work with nature are an antidote to the precarious and destructive agricultural systems that predominate now. For us to become an integral part of a flourishing planet again, creativity and optimism on all fronts feel vital.