Bougainvilla

Bougainvilla, hexagonal tile and chased copper bowl. Pen on paper, 9" x 12".

I've been wanting to buy a bougainvilla for years but they're a) expensive and b) hard to grow and winter-over in the north. Mexico City put me over the top, though, so when I saw some first-year seedling plants thsi spring at one of the flower kiosks near a metro station, I picked one up...and once you pick up the pot, you're done for. The proprietor was knowledgeable and I asked him some questions about wintering the plant over - he said he and his partner do it every year, and so long as there's enough sun and you don't over-water, it will be OK. What the hell, I figured -- this wasn't a $40 hanging basket. I've had good luck with lantanas at our studio, where the winter light is quite strong and constant and I can keep a good eye on the plants - I cut them back pretty ruthlessly when they get leggy and pale, and they come back every year. Have any of you tried this with a bougainvilla?

Anyway, I want to paint it before I put it in its permanent pot, so today it got sketched. The flower bracts are strange, kind of like poinsettias, very much like a different kind of leaf - and they are an odd shape - a set of three petals that almost form a cube or square. Like a dog that has to circle around its tail three times before lying down, I seem to have to study plants by drawing them before I can do anything else, certainly not the simplification that will be necessary here. Of course the color is the main thing, but I like the plant's sturdy gangliness too.

My father-in-law's birthday was a few days ago, and I've been thinking about him -- he would have been 105. Through his stories, bougainvilla also makes me think of the Middle East, so I added a chased copper bowl that is part of a set from J.'s family, and am thinking about some other characters who could play a part in a still life. The bowl worked a whole lot better when I turned it upside down.

Jonathan with a bougainvilla in all its glory, at the Shrine of the Virgin of Guadelupe, Mexico City.

Comments

[Marja-Leena]

I love bougainvillea! I had a plant for several years, bringing it indoors into the solarium in winter. It is not heated so one exceptionally cold winter, though the temp stays above freezing i there, it was too cold and it perished even though it didn't freeze. Now I almost want to try one again!

We saw bougainvillea in bloom on the east coast of Italy when we visited one October years ago.

Much pleasure and good luck with yours - your studio sounds perfect for it.

[Marja-Leena]

Sorry, it was on the west coast of Italy, somewhere north of Rome.

[Ellena]

Don't worry about the plant, Beth. In such good hands as yours it can only strive for perfection.
The first time, 20 years ago, when I was driven around in a little tourist town up north, I was told " we are now in bougainville area". In the translation the words poor-lazy-uneducated and slums came up.

[Rachel Barenblat]

Oh, I love bougainvillea. It grows all over San Antonio, where I was born and reared; and of course it grows all over the Middle East. I like your drawing very much. (And the photograph of Jonathan. :-)

[Priya Sebastian]

This is something I consider very difficult to draw, but you've drawn it so well. I am glad to read that it can be managed in winter too. Bangalore is full of these flowers in many different colours.

[Andrea M.]

Nice drawing. I like the different line weights.

[Roderick Robinson]

I've been trying to decide whether I might ape J's glasses-strategy. Lacking his eyebrows and his tache/beard set-up I doubt whether the dashing immediacy of his what-have-we-here, swept-up specs would do for me what they do for him. Hence, I wear grannie-strings - not chic at all. But as Tom Lehrer said: "the secret of success (is) plagiarise." He was talking about mathematics but it's a rule that applies to other walks of life. Becoming a J-acolyte could be the career step I've been waiting to take for seventy-odd years.