Amy Todman
artist and writer
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Buddleia, 2015 (Edition of 5)
100 pp, digital print
The Buddleia grows behind a steel fence in a patch of wasteland beside the timber yard along the road from my flat. Beside the plant is a large, green glass recycling bin that moves, or is moved, every few days, to the right, left or centre of the plant.
When I noticed the Buddleia I was drawing circles in my studio, repeating the same form over and again. Circling became a thought process as well as a form to draw and I began to think of cycles: circadian, daily and monthly as well as those perhaps more hidden. I began to find connections between my own rhythms and those of the Buddleia neraby.
For 25 days I went to the Buddleia every day, measuring one part with a piece of thread and noting my observations of weather and time. I made a second thread measure, forming one into a circle and tying the other into a chain of thread circles.
Each of the imperfect circles is traced, or held within a digitally generated geometric circle. One form of representation traces another.
Buddleia was inspired by the herbal tradition, in particular the German physician Leonard Fuch’s De Historia Stirpum, first published in 1546. In this book, for the first time, each written description of a plant was accompanied by a corresponding image. This one-for-one description became increasingly significant over the next centuries, requiring that an ‘ideal’ image be created from which many individual plants might be identified.
Creating a type of visual description for a plant, like a tied-thread circle rather than mimetic representation, explores a cyclical relationship between plant and person which an emphasis on identification might miss.