Plant Passport

Much of the landscape where I've lived for the past three years, can look like this:


[Image: Kudzu-infested forest; photo courtesy John D. Byrd, Mississippi State University].

Even waterways, now becoming choked with Pondweed, make you wonder who has the upper hand. Occasionally plants appear to be winning, especially when the current economy yields little money to maintain infrastructure. Even during my first month in the region, plants started working their way into my paintings. Now they are really coming into themselves, like the plants barreling through Munich's Haupbahnhof in this recent painting:


Swarm Separating Self: Haupbahnhof Pondweed, Ink on vellum, 10x45 in, 2009


Swarm Separating Self: Haupbahnhof Pondweed, Ink on vellum, 10x45 in, 2009 (detail)

The dense, defiant roots of these plants stood in perfect contrast to the rootless female figures of my imagined worlds. But then this morning, to stumble upon on a fantastic conversation on Bldgbldg blog with Plant Health and Quarantine Officer for the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew about Plant Passports...all this while reading Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire. I couldn't be more pleased.