Úrsula ROMERO

( 1984)

Lament

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Watercolour on paper. 
1000 x 1000 mm. (39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in.)
Of this large watercolour, the artist has written: ‘The Poppy - it grows in the harshest of environments. It is the flower of dreams, of fate, of escape, of seduction, intoxication, transformation, transcendence, of fertility, death and of survival against all odds. For me, the Himalayan Poppy has an almost unnatural blueness about it which makes it even more otherworldly. I found these poppies in Cluny Gardens in Perthshire on an expedition trip back in 2018. Poppies in black space are about hiding and not being seen properly. Of having to flower in the darkness. As with a lot of my paintings, there’s a ‘doublet’ - two flower heads that have lost their petals. They stand there naked, slightly deformed, with a skirt of anthers, not really looking at one another. The piece is about the distance between lovers and hidden hope.’

 
Born Jessica Rosemary Shepherd, Úrsula Romero is a British artist and botanist, as well as a fellow of the Linnean Society. She obtained degrees in botany at Plymouth University and plant taxonomy at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. After working as a Curator of Natural History at the Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, she joined the staff of the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, where she worked between 2010 and 2014, while also active as a freelance botanical illustrator. In 2013 she was elected to the Florilegium Society of the Chelsea Physic Garden in London. Her work is in the collections of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, The Wellcome Trust, the Royal Horticultural Society and the British Library in London and The Box (formerly the Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery) in Plymouth, as well as the Shirley Sherwood Collection of contemporary botanical art and the Botanic Gardens in Denver, Dublin, Edinburgh, London, Madrid and New York. Most recently, her watercolours were included in the exhibition Ellas ilustran botánica in the Casa de las Ciencas in Logroño in northern Spain. The artist lives and works in the village of Albuñuelas, in the Lecrin Valley of Andalusia in southern Spain.

As the artist has stated, ‘I trained in botany before committing myself fully to painting so that I would understand the processes of plants more comprehensively. Equipped with this scientific knowledge, I am now testing new approaches to my artwork to push the capacity for botanical illustration to bring greater awareness of plants and our interaction with them. I hope to inspire people to think beyond their experience whilst enriching our current perceptions of botanical illustration, its applications and how it sits within the larger scope of the visual arts.’

Úrsula ROMERO

Lament