"Still Life"
The Journal News - 8/21/03
By DOROTHEA SMITH

Twelve intent people sit at long tables in Corinne Lapin-Cohen's family room in Katonah, each staring at a yellow black-eyed Susan, an image they seek to replicate in watercolors. They have been drawing this one flower for six hours, studying it through a magnifying glass and trying to record its every detail and nuance, first in pencil and now with paint on paper.

"Don't be afraid," Lapin-Cohen encourages the group, whose members range in age from their 20s to 70.

"Just put more paint down. Remember the local color is in the mid-tone. That has to be right. It has to be the color you think of when you see the flower. Intuitively, you will do it right."

Over her own drawing table, Lapin-Cohen has pinned these words from the artist Georgia O'Keeffe: "Nobody sees a flower really — it is so small — we haven't time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time."

She takes the time.

Lapin-Cohen goes to each budding artist, exchanges a few words, gives suggestions and encouragement. When she announces at 4 p.m. that the session is over, grownups groan like children. "We want to know where the beds are," says one. "We don't want to leave."

"I can't wait for next week to come," says Marcia Mendel of Scarsdale as she walks down the path to her car from the quaint stone house that was built in 1929 by Jimmy Walker, then mayor of New York. To the left of the path is a walled garden that is flush with roses and a joyous tumble of perennials. These are the subjects of Lapin-Cohen's botanical art.

She's a gardener who loves to paint and an artist who loves to garden. She and her husband, Dr. Alan Cohen, a dental surgeon with an Ossining practice, have been restoring and reclaiming their 10-acre property. An affectionate Bernese mountain dog, Teddy, follows her about as she points out new gardens in the making, one in back surrounding the pool; the other in front, near the pond that is now filled with a sea of forget-me-nots. Her family also includes a 31-year-old son, Brian, who lives in Manhattan, two stepsons, two daughters-in-law and a grandson.

Lapin-Cohen is a botanical artist with an enthusiastic following. A vivacious, energetic woman in her 50s, she is driven by her work. "I love to teach," she says. "If I didn't, I'd be reclusive."

Her mission, if one can call it that, is for people to be inspired, to see things they've seen all their lives but to see them with new eyes.

She teaches "The Fine Art of Botanical Illustration" at Lasdon Park and Arboretum in Somers and "Botanical Watercolor Painting and Drawing" at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx throughout the year. This summer, she is leading seven workshops at her home.

When not teaching, Lapin-Cohen paints realistic watercolors of plants, many of which are in corporate and private collections. After completing a series on native trees for a show at the Royal Horticultural Society, she's now working on a series on herbs, specifically, medicinal plants, in which botanical art is rooted.

As described by Sir Simon Hornby, president of the Royal Horticultural Society, "The art of botanical drawing has a tradition of minute accuracy combined with freshness, portraying the beauty of nature in the color and form of its plants.

"The tradition continues today, as artists of outstanding ability record the introductions of plant breeders as well as species," Hornby said.

Lapin-Cohen defines the art as scientific accuracy combining with the eye and hand of the artist and the passion of a plant lover. "Botanical Art is about precision and clarity — but ultimately it is about life," she says.

"Lapin-Cohen began teaching botanical art only recently. An art history major in college, she received a master's degree in environmental education, wrote natural science programs for children and led walks for the Audubon Society. At age 35, she was also training horses — hunters and jumpers, when she was diagnosed with colon cancer. Too weak to work with horses after chemotherapy, she turned to drawing, first studying with Betty Edwards, author of "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain." Then came numerous classes at the New York Botanical Garden from which she received a certificate in botanical art and illustration.

"They taught me to see, how to take something that is three-dimensional, put it into two dimensions and then make it look real. I was eaten alive with this," she says. "Then I learned to love painting in watercolors in England in 1996, studying with Anne-Marie Evans at the Old Manor House Studio in England."

When the cancer resurfaced in 1998, the paintings just poured out of her, she says. "It was so cathartic." Although Lapin-Cohen says she was challenged physically, "For art, I had time," and she began teaching at Lasdon. A third bout in 2001 just made her more determined to teach botanical art to express what she feels about nature.

Her works also have soul and exhibit a very strong life force. Her students will attest to that.

"Cori (Lapin-Cohen) encourages us to become 'friends' with a flower before picking up a paintbrush," said art student Linda Segreto of Somers, an architectural lighting designer who has studied with Lapin-Cohen for about 18 months. "This involves a lot of 'seeing.' "

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The Joy of Botanical Painting with Corinne Lapin-Cohen
North County News - 11/14/04
by KATHY GRANTHAM

Lasdon Arboretum is a paradise on earth, with acres of rolling hills, wooded trails and pristine flower gardens, located in Somers off Route 35. Protected by the Westchester County Department of Parks and Recreation, it’s a quiet place, more like the ‘sleeping beauty’ of this area.

Art students study botanical painting with Corinne Lapin-Cohen in the Horticultural Room of what once was the spacious Lasdon residence.

With celebrated academic and artistic credentials, Lapin-Cohen is a botanical artist of distinction and a dedicated teacher, but never a strict pedagogue.

Her painting of the Lobelia was chosen as Teatown Reservation’s Wildflower of 2004, now available in notepaper. About 30 of her botanical paintings were recently exhibited at Hammond Museum in North Salem, each one an accurate replica of nature, in the form of wildflowers, shrubs, assorted plants and leaves.

Lapin-Cohen is a graduate of New York Botanical Gardens and also taught their one-day workshops: Wonderful Watercolors, Leaves, The Color Green, Bumps, Lumps and Grooves, all about painting gourds, tree bark and other rough botanical surfaces.

She currently teaches at Lehmann College in the Bronx and at the Lasdon Arboretum in Katonah.

Lapin-Cohen was an art major in college, but always a naturalist and an ardent horticulturist, always connected to plants.

What exactly is botanical painting? It may sound ‘highfalutin,’ but refers to anything that grows. What’s the difference between painting botanicals and painting flowers? “Flower painting is done to create a pretty painting,” she explained. “Botanicals reveal the plant, whether it’s a flower, a seed pod, the roots or the leaves. It’s more than just the flower, and explains leaf attachment, venation, posture, whether the leaves are upright or droop, have serrated or smooth edges, all that merits close attention.”

At the outset, beginning students of botanical painting are surprised to learn that looking is very different from seeing. Lapin-Cohen says that most people do not see what she sees. “Before you can paint it, you have to see it, then you get to know it, then you can draw it and paint it.

“Then you’re hoping when someone looks at it, they see more after seeing your painting, than they’ve seen in the last 25 years of their life, looking at the same plant.”

There’s been a resurgence of botanical painting all over the world. “I think this technological age has people working in virtual isolation on computers,” the artist said. “You need real stuff around you and botanical painting is soothing.”

She’s concerned that kids don’t know where their food comes from. Many of her adult students don’t know that plants make seed because they’re so removed from land, from the natural growth of things.

As a lifelong botanical artist, she knows that botanical painting makes you slow down, look more, keep seeing and always get the soul of the object into the painting. In the art workshops at the Lasdon Arboretum, women are learning a great skill in an oasis of serenity and beauty.

Apparently, male painters are not captivated by such close and accurate scrutiny of plants.

Observing her at the botanical art workshop, a diminutive blonde sprite in jeans, sprinkling knowledge and technique like fairy dust, she surprises and inspires those who say, “I can’t draw, can’t paint!” Her response is, “You can, and I will show you how.”

The women studying botanical painting with ‘Cori,’ were eager to talk about an art form that replicates nature and to reaffirm the joy of painting with Lapin-Cohen.

Elenore Whitney Perrotta was drawing a Japanese maple leaf taken from her tree. Because botanical painting has to be realistic and accurate, she found this art form quite challenging. “I used to do impressionistic painting, which is fast and loose,” she said. “This is like meditation.”

Linda Segreto considers watercolor to be the essence of painting; it’s the tool to show the light better, the natural shading and shadows. “For me, as an architectural lighting designer, seeing the light on an object is what it’s all about.”

As a beginning art student in botanical painting five years ago, Sandi Britten of Bedford described the process. “Cori starts you off in sepia so you don’t concentrate on the pretty colors and forget about the shape of the pear or the gourd or the apple. After the first or second class, we are looking at everything differently. That alone is enough reason for taking a class with her. You will never look at things the same again, ever.”

“There’s a light in watercolor and the painting stays alive,” noted Elaine Brooks, a longtime resident of Yorktown. She taught calligraphy at BOCES and started painting with Cori in 1999 thinking that watercolor would be a nice complement.

Evelyn Tapani-Rosenthal never painted before studying with Cori in 2001. In the midst of painting a Japanese Anemone, she registered an opinion shared by botanical painters. “The greens are so gorgeous, so many shades. Ninety percent of all botanicals are green, so you’ve got to get your greens down.”

Susan Lorch first studied with Lapin-Cohen at the New York Botanical Gardens in a series of one-day workshops. Working with graphite, a fancy name for pencil, she was loath to try watercolor thinking that it runs all over the paper.

She has since learned there’s a delicate point when the dampness of paper and dilution of paint enables you to put the paint on and move it around the paper, but not have it run all over.

Her sable paintbrushes are smooth as silk. “I’m an anti-fur person for clothing, but I use Kalinsky sable brushes which are fur, but taken from the tail of the sable.”

Marjorie Trachtenberg taught biology in a South Bronx high school for 30 years, and has retired. She’s painting the life cycle of the paulonia tree. “We don’t enlarge, we don’t shrink,” she said, showing a sketch of its life-size blossom.”

Experienced botanical painters often return to continue the exploration of watercolor technique.

The current 14-week workshop on botanical painting at Lasdon Arboretum ends on December 18. Lapin-Cohen begins a new series in February. For workshop information, she can be reached at 962-1558