Just completed and to be unveiled Sunday April 17th for the permanent collection of the Missouri Botanical Garden: “The Co-Evolution of Pollinators and Evening Primrose” commemorates the broad sweep of contributions made by Dr. Peter Raven to the Missouri Botanical Garden and the world. The work derives from a quote by Dr. Raven himself, “...to master the diversity of living organisms and use the properties of those organisms as a kind of palette to build sustainability”: A profusion of diversity aligns on the equatorial regions of the world below the dome of the Botanical Garden, while in the center pollinators create a vertical axis, dividing on the left a suggestion of the Japanese garden that balances on the right, Dr. Raven’s 25 years of research in China. Overlaying the composition are swirls of Raven’s Manzanita and clarkia franciscana, and curves of chemistry and biology book-ended by hands of the viewer suggest our responsibility and the fragility of life on Earth.
The first impression of the painting should be of boundless energy, like that of Dr. Raven, organized by an Art Deco influence favored by the Ravens...
The painting will hang in the entrance vestibule of the Schaumburg Auditorium.
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