Plant Stories, an online exhibition of paintings by New Hampshire artist Coralea Wennberg. Wennberg is a self-taught painter who has been passionate about the medium for over 31 years. Plant Stories is an exhibition of oil and acrylic paintings inspired by two ideas.  The first inspiration for the show is the inescapable presence and effect of global warming on our planet.  The show includes landscapes with trees and plants that have strange and unexpected colors and shapes. Inspiration and imagination allowed her to find shapes referencing the human body and its presence in nature. The trees, with their ability to store carbon, are the artist’s focus and implied hero of these paintings.  Wennberg’s second inspiration comes from a book entitled The Herbal of al-Ghafiqi which is a 12th century Arabic text on plants and their uses.  The original copy of this book is in a vault at a library at McGill University.

 “Imagine – a book about plants that was written 1000 years ago, before botany was even a science. Not a lot is known about al-Ghafiqi, and the book has not been translated into English. I loved the simple, elegant drawings of the plants and soon began adding them to my global warming paintings. I wondered how many of these plants still exist, because many of them look really unfamiliar. As I became more interested in the shapes of al-Ghafiqi’s plants, my paintings became more and more abstract as I tried different ways to represent and celebrate them.” – Coralea Wennberg  

For many years, Coralea Wennberg and her husband have been generous supporters of AVA Gallery and Art Center. Plant Stories, paintings by Coralea Wennberg.

All proceeds from the sales of Plant Stories paintings benefit the From the Seed to Bloom Campaign AVA Gallery and Art Center