After a week spent on the Big Island of Hawaii in October, 2008, viewing, studying, and painting hundreds of hybrids of Oncidinae orchids as a participant in Linda Vorobik’s Hawaii Botanical Illustration workshop, I was inspired to resume the watercolor painting segment of my career.

I came home with sketches, reference photos and an armload of cut branches of blooming orchids and went to work.

I began with botanical portrait style paintings, then moved into more contextual renderings of the flowers, and finally to close-up views of the flowers’ fascinating structures and markings, which have an almost abstract character.