Botanical artist and ABA Committee and Education Team member
Footwear from flowers - a sumptuous collection of fantasy shoes. Its an unorthodox design concept but Billy has run with it!
Preferring sneakers to stilettos, I was not sure whether I represented the target audience for The Botanical Shoes, but I neednt have been concerned. For the botanical artist this book offers page after page of gentle, mind-opening inspiration - not really a How to more of a Why not...?.
As anticipated, each of Billys paintings deftly illustrates her supreme skill at finding that perfect sweet spot between the painterly brush-stroke and the photorealistic, inviting the observer to look and then look again more closely, as we try to decipher how each effect is achieved with watercolour glazes, dry-brush work and a very steady hand!
Billy terms her collection of botanical shoes as noetic, referring to the notional rather than tangible existence of each shoe, with living plant subjects arranged on the page to create the illusion of a shoe in silhouette. She states early on in the book: "I make no excuses for my flights of fancy, I only ask that you dance with me to the last page and beyond."
The introductory pages drop a crumb trail of notes, poems and paintings leading one to tip-toe through the story behind these shoes.
As any Bob Ross fan can tell you, We dont make mistakes, just happy little accidents and this was certainly the case with Billys first shoe, which came into being after an awkward compositional placement led her toward a transformative flash of footwear-based inspiration.
The chapters of The Botanical Shoes are themed by colour, each introduced by a page of poetically named colour swatches and an accompanying list of colour-mix information revealing the pigments used from Billys favoured Sennelier range of watercolour paints.
Throughout the book, Billys words encourage the artist to play - with colour, with composition and even with poetry and prose. She drops in little tips here and there for keeping the yellows true, warming-up the reds and tackling those difficult chocolatey purples.
First published in 2022, this is an updated second edition offering those who missed it the first time around an opportunity to discover the book. I noticed in the publishers notes that readers are permitted to reproduce any of the artworks in this book for personal use, or for the purpose of selling for charity, free of charge and without prior permission* which generously offers those who are developing their botanical painting skills an opportunity to practise by recreating Billys designs.
The quality of this new 22 cm x 29 cm, 104 page hardback edition is such that it would enliven any coffee table and is novel enough to entice those who are unfamiliar with the science and strictures of pure botanical illustration to peek inside and find joy in the poetic prose and exquisite artwork it contains.
artbookreview.net
When this landed on the mat, I thought it was the most bizarre idea I had ever seen. The more so when I discovered that, although I had managed to miss it when it first appeared in 2022, this is a reprint. Is there really a market for this, especially from an ostensibly practical art publisher? And yet here it is, reprinted and still in a not-exactly-cheap hardback format.
The title page says that its Dedicated to my students and long-time followers of my Flower Shoes. So its a thing and you certainly cant say its not original. This being Billy Showell, the execution is beyond excellent and I can actually see the appeal, at least up to a point. Billy clearly has a market, although Im not sure quite how many flowers-as-shoes any one person would want. Im wary of damning with faint praise or being cynical, though, as the dedication suggests a following, so what does a humble reviewer know?
Fortunately, were not here to evaluate the art or speculate on whose walls such things might take pride of place.* This is a book review, so the first thing to say is that its the kind of excellent production we know Search Press to be capable of. The reproduction gives us plenty of detail, the format is generous and the pages fall open willingly. Although Billy includes her students in the dedication, this is not an instructional book and the text only makes very passing reference to her working methods, being confined to design and colour choices. Thats appropriate, because the idea is so original and so idiosyncratic that I cant imaging anyone wanting to emulate it other than as perhaps a one-off experiment.
This is a magnificent book that clearly has a market, and that is probably driven by Billys prodigious creative skill.
