“Art and nature shall always be wrestling until they eventually conquer one another so that the victory is the same stroke and line: that which is conquered, conquers at the same time,”
Maria Sibylla Merian.

When I made the decision to bring Abundant Times to life, I always knew that art would play a big part. I want to highlight the beautiful work that nature and environmental artists and activists are creating, and to delve deeper into how art and nature nestle (or wrestle) together. For this blog, I had the absolute pleasure of interviewing Cath Hodsman, who is an entomological artist, illustrator, teacher, conservationist, wild garden enthusiast and all-round earth champion.

Cath has exhibited and showcased her art, and taught at many esteemed venues during her career including, the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, RHS Wisley and the Natural History Museum. She is an Associate Member of the Royal Society of Biology.

As well as discussing her beautiful work and love of insects, Cath introduced me to the inspirational German artist and entomologist, Maria Sibylla Merian. Read on to find out more.

When did your connection with art and nature begin?
It started when I was little, my dad was always really interested in nature, we used to watch Jacques Cousteau programmes together, which were revolutionary at the time. And, of course, there was the young David Attenborough. I was always arty but the two were separate throughout my life until the youngest of my three children was old enough to walk to school without me. At that point I decided that I wanted to go back to work and that I would try to combine my love of nature, specifically insects, with art and make it really niche. I wanted to create paintings that were both detailed and scientifically accurate and make my work stand for conservation and the appreciation of insects.

I think my friends thought I was mad and wondered why I didn’t paint portraits of Elvis and sell them at the market. But I stuck to my guns and slowly but surely I started working with partner and host organisations like the National Trust, the Wildlife Trusts, the Royal Society of Biology and the Natural History Museum. When you decide to follow your passion, you have to nurture it, let it evolve, diversify and take on a life and an energy of its own. If you believe in and love what you do, it is incredibly life affirming.

When you have a strong connection to nature and you’re creative you see things other people don’t. I see that in your work, it’s really magical. I love that you show such care and affection for every insect, even the flea. How do you develop that?
Microscopes! I’ve got 13 modern ones and two vintage ones. The reason why it’s difficult for people to appreciate insects is because we can’t see them. You might see something buzz past you in the garden, or catch the flash of an iridescent wing. A lack of connection creates a gap that’s filled with fear.

While you’re walking through the woods looking at the trees, I’m looking down at the ground for ethical specimens. Insects live fast and die young, so I’ve always got a little pot in my bag to put dead specimens in. I also get given some by friends and family, I then preserve and conserve them. You can photograph live specimens but it doesn’t give you the detail, you have to back it up with an ethically sourced natural death specimen and then using a microscope you can literally count the hairs on the legs, the colour of the hairs, the length of the hairs, the thickness, the direction they grow in. Then you can think about the form and function of those hairs and put those in the painting. That’s how I get the detail in, I’m like an astronaut but instead of going into outer space to unseen worlds, I go to inner space to unseen worlds. I regularly go to places not many people have been, it’s marvellous.

Does sharing this gift through teaching help to decrease the fear that people have?
Absolutely, yes. The artwork has got to look beautiful; it can’t look scary. I blow up all the detail so that it reveals the colour, texture, design perfection and the beauty. Then people really appreciate the detail, they’ll say things like, I didn’t realise how pretty, intricate or strong that insect is. Then you’re closing the fear gap and allowing people to connect. Also, you’re educating them about the detail, why it’s there, why they have wings, what they do, how they work, what they look like.

If I can’t get all the detail into a painting then I’ll paint a label, which gives more information. Such as if it’s male or female, what country it originates from, what it’s pollinating, what its habitat is. It looks like a page ripped out of an old natural historian notebook from the 1600s, a moment caught in time. Each painting or drawing I produce is an educating, disseminating and celebrating artwork.

What have the insects taught you?
I’m a much better person now and I’m certainly more enlightened. I’ve always loved the natural world, but now it’s in everything I do. I had that wakeup call that you and other folks like us have had. If we all considered our lifestyle choices and made small changes to protect nature it would put pressure on the bigger players that need to change their ways, those big corporate forces. And if we all gardened for wildlife it would make a huge difference. We have the power to do it, we just need to keep pushing. The message really is getting out there now.

I love that you said you’re more enlightened because of the insects. Did your mindset shift suddenly or was it gradual?
I think it was gradual. I’ve always loved nature and we were aware of global warming and that plastics were bad etc. I remember helping my children revise their GCSE chemistry and part of the curriculum was how plastics are made, how strong the molecules are and how bendy and thinking this feels a bit weird.  As my children got older and I had more time, I started to listen to that inner voice, the conscience. Then layer by layer, day by day you uncover this horror story, the suffering of the earth. It sounds so dramatic but it’s this huge epiphany. And you make a choice, you can stick your head in the sand or you can try and do something about it. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future and obviously our time’s limited on this earth but I’m going to do everything I can. It’s life consuming now.

Humans are conditioned to think that we’re more than everything else, which is upsetting. There’s a spider kill it! Why do you think that’s happened?
In many ways we live a virtual life. That can be a great thing, you and I are connecting right now on the internet, but a virtual world means you’re distanced from connection to the earth. When I was growing up we would be kicked out the door after breakfast and we wouldn’t go back in until dinner. I would lick sap from trees I was a real little gremlin but kids don’t do that now. We’ve created a prison for ourselves, we live in a safe bubble that has muffled life.

When did you make the connection to nature friendly gardening?
I’ve always loved being outside and because of my work have always gardened with wildlife in mind – providing habitats, food  and have never used pesticides or other chemicals, but then Covid happened and lockdown, I couldn’t teach, I didn’t feel creative so in the warmth of that April we gravitated to our outside space. I started to see it in a completely different way. My husband felt the same, we just saw it with fresh eyes. So, we stopped mowing and the life that came into the garden, increased 10-fold! We’ve even had a murmuration of starlings land in the no-mow to feed on the insects in the long grass and bathe in our wildlife ponds – the din they made was awesome…and all because we put the mower away.

Mowing seems to be a lot of folks’ first step. Again, we’re so conditioned to think you need to have a lawn that looks perfect, flower beds that go round the edges. I think we’re going to look back on those traditional gardens in horror in a few years.
I cringe, I think what was I thinking! I’ve been a bit perplexed when certain celebrity gardeners have said that wildlife gardening is catastrophic for wildlife, which is clearly wrong. There are some folks who are feeling a little bit threatened by wildlife gardening. At first I was surprised and a bit cross by this but then you realise it’s because we’re making an impact. There are millions of people like us who are going through this transition. Every day, more folks are jumping on board the raft, which is getting bigger and bigger. It’s saving lots of souls not just human souls, invertebrates, birds there’s room for everyone to jump on board.

I feel like all the creatures have been screaming at us for years to wake up pleading for help and we walk around with our eyes shut ignoring them.
It’s horrific really and it’s kind of a pleasure pain because ignorance is bliss. If you’re not connected to the natural world you’re in for an easy ride. However, if you’re like us and you have an in-depth understanding and appreciation of exactly where we are in terms of nature’s health, it’s quite a scary place to be.

Let’s talk about your spider picture, which I think is just so beautiful.
I used to paint invertebrate illustrations for Countryfile Magazine and they asked me to paint a Pholcus phalangioides, commonly known as a Cellar Spider or Daddy Long Legs and an Eratigena atrica, (re-classified from Tegenaria Duellica in 2013) which is a giant house spider, for a Halloween issue. I looked around for some natural death specimens, which are very easy to find in the house or garage. When I put the giant house spider under the microscope I was completely taken aback. I had to calm myself down, those eight eyes and eight legs right up close and personal! I looked at the design perfection of these arachnids, how they’ve evolved in terms of their survivability and their habitat and all I could see was utter beauty. All the sensory hairs, the shine on the eyes. I submitted the paintings and they asked me to add in some shadows, which really lifted the legs so it looks like it’s floating. It’s one of my favourite pieces but it was quite a challenge. All I could see were legs and eyes for weeks after!

You were invited to do a workshop about Maria Sibylla Merian in 2016 at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, organised by St James’s Palace, in line with their exhibition, ‘Maria Merian’s Butterflies’. She sounds like an extraordinary woman can you tell me about her?
She really is an inspiration. She was born in 1647 and she studied and painted insects in more detail than had really ever been done before. When she was 52, she sailed to the Dutch colony of Suriname in South America to study insects with Dorothea, who was one of her daughters. This was at a time when women were kept barefoot and pregnant! She also ran an art school and made her own paints. She was inspired by her stepfather, he encouraged her to paint when she was younger and to look at metamorphosis at a time when people thought that insects were in league with the devil. Because they disappeared at the end of every day they were thought of as shifty and if things were shifty then they must be evil. When she was young, there wasn’t even a word for butterfly, they were called summer birds because they were only on the wing during the summer.

Despite all this she understood what metamorphosis was, or more so than had been catalogued at the time. Sadly, she fell ill when she was in Suriname, her health deteriorated and she became less and less productive. The Tsar Peter the Great heard about her work and he sent an envoy to Amsterdam to look at her paintings. He acquired many of them, which were shipped to Russia, but sadly the payment for them arrived after she died. George III also bought some of her paintings, which are in the royal collections, hence the exhibition and the workshop at The Queen’s Gallery.

She was largely forgotten because she was female but she’s had a huge renaissance recently. David Attenborough is quoted as saying that she’s, “among the most significant contributors to the field of entomology.”

She really deserves the recognition that she’s getting she’s an inspiration to us all. We’re all just mini Maria’s really.

You can follow Cath on Instagram and Twitter and you can buy her beautiful artwork online through her Etsy shop, InsectArtByCath. Or find out about her fascinating insect-art workshops on her website: https://www.cathhodsmanwildlifeartist.com/2013/09/painting-courses/