Chicago Botanic Garden Spring 2020

14 chicagobotanic.org For artist Philip Juras, the importance of prairies reaches beyond the canvas Many times over the last six years, landscape artist Philip Juras grabbed a backpack stuffed with his outdoor painting gear—cam- era, easel, small canvases, and oil paints—and drove from his home in Athens, Georgia, to visit Illinois prairies: Grigsby Prairie near Barrington. Nachusa Grass- lands near Dixon. Fults Hill Prairie in the Mississippi River Valley. e exhibition Picturing the Prairie: Paintings by Philip Juras at the Chicago Botanic Garden captures his passion for painting prairies and celebrating the beauty of these grasslands. “I want the viewer to be able to stand next to me in these landscapes and ex- perience that place as I did,” Juras said. “By o ering a suite of images and prai- rie landscapes from around the state, I also want people to take away the idea of how rich and varied and beautiful this largely forgotten ecosystem is.” Juras hopes that by seeing a prairie’s di- versity in plants and its characteristics in a painting, “those who don’t know the subject well may now be a little more interested in them and may care a little more about the value of prairies.” In fact, Picturing the Prairie is also a Garden-wide program on the prairie and its role in a healthy ecosystem. e youngest of seven children, Juras grew up as part of a nature-loving fam- ily in Georgia, and he often helped his master gardener mother in the family’s vegetable and native plant gardens. In his teens, he discovered the works of eighteenth-century naturalist William Bartram and Bartram’s “words of the Southeast as it was before settlement,” Juras said. at inspiration led Juras to earn a bachelor of ne arts degree at the University of Georgia, followed by a master’s in landscape architecture. It was during his master’s research that Juras fell in love with grasslands, inves- tigating them across the Southeast and later in New England, Texas, and Colombia. “ ey all have absolutely gorgeous landscapes with their ne tex- tures in the foreground and long views because they’re open spaces,” he said. “ ey’re often fringed beautifully by woodland trees. “So they’re compelling ecologically, piquing my interest in nature. And they’re compelling visually, piquing my interest as an artist.” ey also have a fascinating history, and it’s that history of vanishing and vanished landscapes that is often the subject of Juras’s work, from oil paint- ings to books and lectures, from the landscapes of the Southeast to a portrait of an intact barrier island o Georgia’s coast, Little St. Simons Island.