About The Artist
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 Pam Kessler is an accomplished artist with a refined sense of draftsmanship,
composition and watercolor technique. These qualities alone make her
watercolors noteworthy. But it is artistic insight – a far more elusive
quality - that has earned Pam a growing national reputation and makes these
limited-edition orchid prints a rare opportunity to experience her work
firsthand.
Pam's orchids are rendered with a delicacy and grace that faithfully capture
their legendary allure. Her images are both personal and invitational. Simple
appreciation of the orchid's beauty, Pam seems to suggest, won't do. Something
more is required of the observer: involvement, investment, purposeful
response. Evidence of this response can be seen in the pots, wires and
supports that lend scale and contextual weight to these striking works. The
effect is quietly magnetic: Pam's images manage to convey both the evocative
beauty of the orchid and the nurturing intervention of the orchid lover.
These images are accessible, direct and visually arresting. Yet they evoke an
unmistakable sense of mystery, perhaps exposing the orchid's tenuous
connection to the mundane plane of existence to which less exotic forms of
life are relegated.
 Her watercolors are reminiscent of the starkly beautiful eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century botanical etchings and lithographs created by
artist/printmaker teams such as Edwards/Sanforn and Steward/Lizars. However,
Pam's orchids do not portray beauty in isolation, but as a revelation of the
interaction between observers and observed.
Active response yields a depth of vision denied the passive observer. Those
whose passions have been ignited by the orchid already know this truth. Others
can glimpse it through these provocative images.
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