Considering plants and the question of extinction: Paintings by Janise Yntema

Janise Yntema creates portraits of red listed species to bring awareness to the variety of critically endangered or extinct plants on the red list index.

This series of beeswax and pigment drawings captures the delicate presence of these intricate plants and the beauty at risk of being lost in the natural world.

Inspired by botanical classification systems of the 17th and 18th century, as well as 19th century daguerreotypes, Janise Yntema creates portraits of red listed species to bring awareness to the beauty and sentience of the variety of critically endangered or extinct plants on the red list index.

The red list delineates plant species into categories, from regionally extinct, critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable and near threatened. These featured plants are from the critically endangered list or have become regionally extinct.

This series of beeswax and pigment drawings is part of an ongoing project on plant diversity, both from past geological eras as well as the present, with the intent to amass a selection of species from different geographic locations, creating an assemblage of global plant loss at this point in the Anthropocene era.

Each work seeks to capture the delicate presence of these intricate plant species and the beauty at risk of being lost in the plant world.