`I like to paint plants in a way that tells some of their story," says artist and designer, Patricia Jorgensen. "It's like a narrative of the plant's life, I like to show all the bites out of it, the dead bits, the seed pods: everything that tells you about the life cycle of the plant. I'm a bit of a biographer, I suppose," she adds.
And like all good biographers, she believes in spending as much time as possible in the company of her subjects, soaking up their character and spirit. And she never, ever works from photographs. "The camera just freezes one split second," she explains. Instead, her paintings are a "distillation" of hours - and sometimes, days - of observation.
Besides plants, Patricia paints "gardenscapes" although this summer's exasperating weather prevented her setting up her easel for any length of time in Irish gardens. Instead, she has concentrated on a particular garden abroad with which she has been having an ongoing relationship. La Mortella - on the volcanic island of Ischia, just off Naples - is largely the creation of Susana Walton, wife of composer, Sir William Walton.
Working to plans drawn up in 1956 by the landscape architect Russell Page, the Waltons transformed their dry, sloping site into a jungly, near-tropical paradise with hundreds of varieties of plants. Groves of tree ferns, palms, Strelitzia (the bird of paradise plant) and orchid-clad Monstera (the Swiss cheese plant) now clothe the once-arid ground. Pools and fountains were made, and lined with arum lilies, Alocasia, Pontaderia and other bold, water-loving plants.
The Waltons followed carefully Page's advice, including his directive to "never plant one, plant a hundred". Even now, 15 years after the composer's death, and four decades after work started, Susana Walton still continues to develop the 38-hectare garden. "There are always crates of things arriving from nurseries all over the world," says Patricia Jorgensen, who has made a painting pilgrimage to La Mortella each year for the past four years.
And each time she has documented a bit of the garden, or some of its plants, in her paintings. This spring, when it was too cold to work outside, she made a series of accurate depictions of camellias - of which there are many fine tree-sized specimens at La Mortella. Lady Walton has collected a number of the paintings as part of a garden archive. This pleases Patricia, not just because it's pleasant to have a patron, but because she feels strongly that gardens should back up their histories by collecting botanical art pertaining to the garden. "It is interesting that even now where photography is so sophisticated there is still a place for the true botanical illustrator."
"La Mortella is a very strong garden," she says in her Dublin studio, where she is preparing for an exhibition of paintings - which will include works made at the Italian garden, as well as "plant portraits" and studies from various Irish gardens. "In fact, it's quite an intimidating garden, with gunnera leaves the size of this table, and strelitzia leaves the height of the window." Her gestures describe some big, scary plants. "They are very daunting when you see them first, because you think, how can I capture this is in the delicacy of watercolour?"
But capture it she does - in confident brush-strokes saturated with all shades of green, from the flat venom-green of a wind-ripped banana leaf to the cool dusty tones of a spiny Agave americana. And although it is evident that she is in awe of this garden's brute strength - its thrusting, powerful stems and urgent, sinewy shapes - her irrepressible designer's eye brings it under control on the paper. She neatly delineates each of the sharp teeth on the margins on a tree aloe, carefully outlines every hole in the Swiss cheese plants and approvingly notes the symmetry in the frond of a tree fern.
Even in her "plant portraits", which she describes as "close-ups of the heads of plants" are informed by her sense of design. The crazily frazzled parrot tulips for instance, from Glasnevin's Botanic Gardens and Altamont in Carlow, are again and again brought to order by their central motif of neat black stamens. And in her portrait of a big, dried, inky hydrangea head, she delights in the repeating pattern of the squared, four-part flowers.
"Design is everywhere," she declares. "And the more you look at nature the more you realise that all decorative design derives from it."
Patricia Jorgensen's exhibition continues at 24 Kingram Place (off Fitzwilliam Place), Dublin 2 until October 31st. Mon - Fri: 11 a.m. - 5.30 p.m., Sat: 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. Inquiries: 01-6611094. Prices range between £295 and £900.
Diary Date: The Irish Garden
Plant Society's annual sale takes place tomorrow, 2 p.m. - 4 p.m., in the parish centre of the Pyramid Church, Glasnevin. Keen plants-people should arrive punctually to snap up the rare plants and Irish cultivars that will feature this year.