Mary Vaux Walcott Wildflower Adventure

About This Project

Be an artist and a naturalist—explore, observe, record, and paint like Mary Vaux Walcott did. Mary Vaux Walcott (1860–1940) was an artist who didn’t just paint flowers at a desk. She spent years exploring the Canadian Rockies, hiking through mountains, glaciers, and fields to observe and paint nature. Before she considered herself an artist, she was a naturalist and photographer and helped document glaciers with her brothers—way before climate change was something people talked about. Her glacier observation data is still used by scientists today! Mary received her first set of watercolor paints when she was eight-years old, and enjoyed sketching flowers on her scientific explorations. A botanist (someone who studies plants) once asked her to paint a rare flower (arnica), and that success helped her focus on botanical illustration. She painted hundreds of flowers native to North America. She painted so many that the Smithsonian published 400 of her scientifically accurate flower paintings in 1925 in a five-volume set called North American Wild Flowers. People were so impressed they nicknamed her “The Audubon of Botany.” In this project, you’ll make your own “field study” of flowers in your neighborhood, just like Mary Vaux Walcott. Go on a mini flower hunt, look closely like a scientist, and paint a true-to-life watercolor. If you're really ambitious, you could document all the flowers in your neighborhood and turn them into a book! For more information about Mary Vaux Walcott, we recommend: National Museum of Women in the Arts, “5 Fast Facts: Mary Vaux Walcott” https://nmwa.org/blog/5-fast-facts/5-fast-facts-mary-vaux-walcott/ Smithsonian American Art Museum, “Mary Vaux Walcott” https://americanart.si.edu/artist/mary-vaux-walcott-5197