Artist's Projects
Lara Call Gastinger is an artist and botanical illustrator from Charlottesville, Virginia and was the chief illustrator of the Flora of Virginia, a botanical reference. She has her undergraduate degree in Biology from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in plant ecology from Virginia Tech. She has been awarded two gold medals (2007, 2018) at the Royal Horticultural Society Botanical Art shows in London and her work is in the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. Her artwork appears in the latest Peterson’s Field Guide to Mushrooms and American Society of Botanical Artists Botanical Art Techniques Handbook. She teaches online and in person at the University of Virginia Landscape Architecture Department with a class that unites both plant identification and ways to artistically document plants.
The subjects of her art are artifacts of the natural world and reveal detailed evidence of the natural processes of growth, reproduction, and decay. She finds inspiration in a carrot that has gone to flower, a broken seedpod, twisted roots or insect damage to a leaf. She strives to make a plant portrait in such a way that it reveals its character and uniqueness. Her focus on the small details and celebration of the everyday hopefully inspires others to look a bit deeper and linger a bit longer. She has gained international recognition with the creation of her “perpetual journal” that has inspired naturalists around the world to start their own.
