I have a challenge for you. The next time you're stuck in traffic, take a minute to take a look at the sea of cars around you.
How many car companies do you think you could recognize? I'm not even really into cars, but I think I'd do fairly well.
But then look beyond the cars to the trees that line the side of the road. How many of those could you identify?
Probably not as many, right? Year upon year, we grow further and further away from nature to the point where we have to question: What experience of nature will the next generation have?
And if that generation lacks a sort of emotional connection with their surroundings, then will they bother to fight and save it when we need it most? My name is Nirupa Rao, and I'm a botanical artist.
In short, that means I paint plants, usually with watercolor, in a way that aims to be not only aesthetically appealing but also scientifically accurate. And I'm well aware that this is quite an odd profession for a 21st-century urban Indian — some might say outdated in the age of the camera — but here's how my journey began.
A few years ago, I met two naturalists who work with the Nature Conservation Foundation: Divya Mudappa and T. R. Shankar Raman. And now interestingly, they actually began their careers working with animals, but they soon came to realize that if they were to protect those animals, they'd also have to protect their habitats — that is, the trees they live off.
And so they started a rainforest restoration program aimed at growing local trees that local birds and animals rely on. And they were looking to visually document them in some way, but the photographers they approached came up empty-handed.
These trees were up to 140 feet tall. That's 26 times my height. Try capturing giants like that in a single camera frame.
Besides, the surrounding greenery was just too dense to clearly isolate a single tree. And so together, we decided to give good old painting a shot.
