Art in Bloom: From Garden to Form: Botanicals, Process, and Carving in Practice with Katharine Watson | Lecture and Demo

Join us for a unique program with artist, printmaker and designer Katharine Watson to explore how plants, flowers, and horticultural practice shape her print and pattern work.

In this presentation, Watson will share how close observation of botanicals, from growing them herself, studying their structures, and understanding their life cycles, becomes the foundation for her hand-carved block print designs.

Through a combination of image and demonstration, audiences will see how an artist looks at a plant and translates it into form: breaking organic material into shape, rhythm, and composition.

The talk offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at artistic process—bridging gardening, observation, and making—and invites audiences to see plants not just as inspiration, but as collaborators in creative work.

About the Artist:
Katharine Watson is an artist and printmaker whose work is rooted in a deep attention to nature, pattern, and the handmade. Raised between New York, London, and Hong Kong, she developed an early sensitivity to visual detail and design that continues to shape her practice today. She works primarily in linoleum block printing, carving her designs by hand and printing each piece individually on an antique press in her Portland, Maine studio. Botanical forms are central to Watson’s work, inspired not only by observation but by cultivation. She is an avid flower grower, transforming her garden into a seasonal source of both material and meaning. Her work can be found at her new brick and mortar shop, Open Studio, at 199 Pleasant Avenue Deering Center, in Portland, Maine. Katharine has collaborated with and licensed her work to a wide range of commercial, cultural, and publishing partners, including Minted, Uncommon Goods, Chronicle Books, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hygge & West, Schoolhouse, and Loeffler Randall. katharinewatson.com