by Frances Stilwell

The paintings of Oregon-based artist and scientist Frances Stilwell aim to answer such questions and provide a unique opportunity to visit such a precious and lost place. 

While working towards an MS in Botany-Biophysics from University of Cincinnati in 1967, Stilwell was at one point asked by a UC art professor where her truest passion belonged. Stilwell responded, “All I know is when I see a fruticose lichen under a dissecting scope, I want to draw it, not study it.” It was inevitable that a young Stilwell would soon move to Oregon in search of adventure and space to pursue what she’d always known was her true vocation: art.

But it is this combination of her passion for art and her unyielding fascination with the natural world that infuses her work with such a palpable artistic generosity—on Stilwell’s canvases, the landscape is both loved and truly seen, understood. One leaves this artist’s work with a sense of having obtained not only new data, but a new angle from which to appreciate and observe our world.

It is from Frances Stilwell’s most recent book, Oregon’s Botanical Landscape: An Opportunity to Imagine Oregon Before 1800, that the following three paintings and accompanying texts have been excerpted. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

—HDJ Editorial Staff

“Leslie Gulch”

2002-03. Pastel and watercolor. 14" x 19"
Jordan Valley, OR
Western juniper (juniperus occidentalis)
Open, very dry sagebrush desert

The SageSTEP members helped me understand the environmental dynamics of Oregon’s Northern Basin and Range. Before 1800, lightning fires maintained a flexible balance between junipers, sagebrush and grass. When ranchers arrived, they didn’t realize they had to rotate stock so the highly nutritious bunchgrass was over-eaten. With a reduction in grass, the fires decreased. However, in the 1890s the highly flammable annual, Eurasian cheatgrass, appeared and grew where overgrazing and fires left bare spots. Frequent fires allowed more cheatgrass invasion. In the early 1900s, official fire suppression began, which totally knocked Nature’s balance out of whack. Junipers increased in number increasing water demands on an already dry habitat. In my painting of Leslie Gulch, imagined before 1800, junipers have not yet spread and sagebrush has not been touched by recent fires. We can imagine bunchgrass growing between the shrubs.

“Wild Rye,Higher than a Man’s Stirrups”

2006. Pastel and watercolor. 11" x 16"
Shaniko, OR
Great basin wild rye (leymus cinereus)
Moist summer and wet winter soil

Down in the hollow of a dry creek bed one October evening, I painted wild rye grass growing free on the bank’s edge. The rancher, proud of her Great Basin wild rye, said it used to grow in thick stands and “can still reach higher than a man’s stirrups.” Rick Miller, retired OSU Range Ecologist, told me lightning fires decreased temporarily in the 1870s after the reduction of flammable grass by so many cows and sheep. Then, when Eurasian cheatgrass became prevalent, fires increased. Miller says, “I have learned over my career the more you know about an ecosystem, the more complicated it gets; the more you realize what you don’t know, the more humble you get.” A successful approach to combat cheatgrass is seeding with bunchgrass immediately after a burn. Bunchgrass choices include: Great Basin wild rye in deep soil and bluebunch wheatgrass or the introduced crested wheatgrass in shallow soil. Bunchgrass seed is sometimes hard to come by.

“Fragile Beauty”

2003. Pastel. 8" x 7"
Weiser, ID
Narrow-leafed phacelia (phacelia linearis)
Dry, sandy soils

Erika Scortino, former bronco-buster in Washington State (now a student of chemistry and biochemistry) says, “That’s the way it is in the desert, suddenly a single plant arrives out of nowhere. A knockout gorgeous flower surviving in a harsh environment.” The spirit of independence personified by this fragile beauty does not apply to all plant species on the east side of the Cascades as I have seen large concentrations of lavender camas, pink phlox, and yellow buckwheat growing in the pale, gray-green sagebrush. 

A rancher from east of the Cascades commented, “Nature is brutal over here as it takes longer to recover from a disaster, not like over there on the west side, where you have plenty of precipitation and winters aren’t harsh.” Harshness comes in part from elevational differences. Altitude on plains east of the Cascades is around 4000 feet whereas in the Willamette Valley the height is only 400.

Visit this and other work by Frances Stilwell at:

The Oregon Historical Society Museum
1200 SW Park Ave, Portland, OR 97205
M-F: 10AM-5PM / Sat: CLOSED / Sun: 12PM-5PM

Frances Stilwell was born an artist, though for several years struggled to become a scientist. Her birthplace, in 1940, was Cincinnati, Ohio. After one year at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, she received two degrees in Botany (1963 BA) and Botany-Biophysics (1967 MS) at the University of Cincinnati. She left Ohio in 1969 seeking adventure in Oregon and the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Here, she was able to combine the best parts of her worlds of science (her avocation) and art (her true vocation) when working on books and exhibitions. From January 14 to May 1, 2022, the 81 artworks featured in Oregon’s Botanical Landscape will be exhibited at the Oregon Historical Society Museum in Portland, Oregon, where the paintings are permanently archived.