Meet Donna Torres

Today we’re excited to be connecting with Donna Torres again. If you haven’t already, we suggest you check out our prior conversation with them here.

Donna, always such a pleasure connecting with you and thank you for sharing your stories, insights and inspiring messages with our community. We’re looking forward to getting the download and what you have been up to since our last interview, but first can you briefly introduce yourself to folks who might have missed the prior conversation.
I am an artist living in Miami, Florida. I taught Painting for Florida International University and Botanical Art for Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. I have also worked on big plant illustration projects. My work is primarily in painting and drawing focusing on plants, people and culture. I love studying different cultures from ancient to modern times and seeing how they used the plants in their natural surroundings. I bring all these ideas into the work I do whether it’s a complex graphite drawing, an oil painting or traditional botanical illustration. The botanical paintings, mostly in watercolor, are the groundwork for textile designs and print sets. I have specialized on plants that have been used as medicine for the body and spirit. Many of my plant paintings have appeared in books, for example, The Nature of Drugs: History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact, Volumes 1 & 2, by Alexander Shulgin, The Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs: 50 Years of Research (1967-2017), Edited by Dennis McKenna, Ph.D. and Sir Ghillean Prance, both published by Synergetic Press. I’m currently involved in other book projects in addition to creating paintings that honor historical female plant explorers. My new paintings are continually feeding into new textile designs and prints for my online shop at donnatorres.com.

Alright, so our main goal today is to give our audience an update on what you have been up to since our last conversation. We’d love to hear how things are going and what you are most looking forward to or excited about these days.
I’ve been keeping busy with lots of fun projects since I retired from teaching at Florida International University. I finished up two big solo shows of paintings and drawings in Sala Gasco Arte Contemporaneo in Santiago, Chile and at Miami International Airport. The MIA exhibition, The Radiance of Proximity, was important to me since my work is inspired by plants, people and cultures from around the world. I was able to show work inspired by exotic places in South America and work inspired by my home base here in Miami, Florida. Post exhibition (April 2024), I’ve been making some small format oil paintings for inclusion as frontispieces in a series of books by Jonathan Ott. I’m currently preparing the drawing for another frontispiece. I also recently finished a couple works for my female plant explorer series. I made one on the incredible life of Marianne North, 1830 – 1890, born in Great Britain. She travelled the world painting plants “in their homes”, in their native habitats we would call it today. I made another of myself with local plants growing through my feet. This is my ongoing project. The next in the series will be Ynes Mexia, a Mexican American woman who traveled and collected plants for important herbariums around the world. Her travels were extensive, travelling from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Rounding out my painting projects were workshops given in a Chilean National Park and at a local venue, Vizcaya Museum and Gardens.

We also want to give folks a chance to get to know you a bit better so we’ve prepared a fun lightning round of questions. Ready?

Favorite Movie: The Journals of Knud Rasmussen

Favorite Book: Shikasta

Favorite TV Show: Station 11

Favorite Band or Artist: Anselm Kiefer

Sweet or Savory: Savory

Mountains or Beach: Beach

Favorite Sport (to watch): Skating

Favorite Sport (to play): Gardening

Did you play sports growing up (if so which ones): Bike riding

As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up: Artist

French Fries or Onion Rings: French Fries

Favorite Breakfast Food: Overnight oats

What are you most excited about in the coming year?
This year I have lots of travel planned including a visit to a special exhibition of painting from Sienna. The show focuses on a short time span pre-Renaissance when artists used intense color and multiple points of view. I have always felt affinities of my work with this time period. I’ll continue my series of paintings on female plant explorers and go to California to immerse myself with the objects of Ynes Mexia (the Mexican American plant collector who lived from 1870 – 1930) and incorporate what I learn there into my work. I’ll continue with this theme doing oil paintings which honor these amazing women. More small format oil paintings will be made for the author, Jonathan Ott, to serve as frontispieces for his set of deluxe edition books he is working on. I’m looking forward to working more in textile design with the botanical paintings I have done as source material. I hope to spend some time as well working on my print and textile business at donnatorres.com.

Website: toseeclearly.com – artist website and my shop, donnatorres.com

Instagram: @toseeclearly, and @visionary_garden

Facebook: @donnatorresart

Image Credits
Donna Torres