Lakehouse Portrait Co. / Appalachian Botanicals

Appalachian Botanicals

Native Appalachian plants discovered along lakes, banks, creeks, coves, and forest edges, painted through water, light, habitat, and place.

The flowers came first. The habitats stayed with me.

Shop the prints See the habitats

A collection of plants I stopped for

These are not isolated flower studies.

These paintings began the same way many of my paintings begin: by stopping the boat, walking a bankline, or following a creek because something made me want to look closer.

The plants matter, but the places around them matter too. Cumberland Azalea above sandstone and green water. Great Laurel making shade over a clear creek. Umbrella Magnolia leaves catching rain light. Butterfly Milkweed holding still long enough for fritillaries to gather.

I am an explorer first. I follow what catches my eye, then come home and learn what it means. The painting usually starts later.
Detail of Cumberland Azalea orange blooms against purple sandstone
Cumberland Azalea / bloom
Detail of Great Laurel blossoms and reflected creek stones
Great Laurel / creek light
Detail of Umbrella Magnolia flower and green filtered rain light
Umbrella Magnolia / bloom
Detail of fritillary butterfly and orange Butterfly Milkweed flowers
Butterfly Milkweed / gathering

What happens when I find one

Curiosity comes first.

Most of these paintings start the same way. I notice something from the water, stop what I am doing, and go look closer.

Sometimes that means pulling the boat toward a shoreline. Sometimes it means climbing a steep bank to get photographs. Sometimes it means coming home and spending hours trying to understand what I found.

When people started telling stories about places they remembered seeing Cumberland Azaleas decades ago, it became clear this was not just a beautiful flower. That is what I love about native plants. One thing opens into another: memory, habitat, geology, pollinators, water, light.

The painting usually starts later. Curiosity comes first.

Plants in place

Specific plants, specific Appalachian habitats.

Each painting begins with a real habitat. These plants are shown where they naturally belong: along creeks, on sandstone banks, beneath forest canopies, and among native pollinator communities.

The reference layer matters to me because it makes the beauty less vague. The plant name is only the beginning. The rock, water, shade, bloom time, surrounding growth, and pollinators all help explain why a place feels the way it does.

Cumberland Azalea Rhododendron cumberlandense A deciduous native azalea of the southeastern mountains, with orange to red-orange summer flowers and a strong association with slopes, banks, woodland edges, and acidic soil. Botanist E. Lucy Braun formally described the red azalea of the Cumberlands in 1941. It is easy to confuse with Flame Azalea at first glance, but Cumberland Azalea usually blooms later, after the leaves have expanded, and often reads redder. In this painting, it belongs to steep purple sandstone above emerald water: not a water plant exactly, but a plant transformed by the lake light below it.
Great Laurel Rhododendron maximum A broadleaf evergreen rhododendron that can make Appalachian creeks feel enclosed and protected. Its white blooms, leathery leaves, mossy banks, and cool shade all belong together; the creek is part of the plant's atmosphere, even when the flowers are what first catch your eye.
Umbrella Magnolia Magnolia tripetala A native understory magnolia of rich woods, coves, and ravines, named for the way its long leaves cluster near the ends of branches like an umbrella. The flowers are pollinated by beetles, which makes the whole plant feel even older and stranger in the best way. The flower matters, but the scale of the leaves is the encounter: living shelter, filtered rain light, and that old, almost prehistoric feeling of magnolia shade.
Butterfly Milkweed Asclepias tuberosa A bright orange native milkweed of sunny, open places, valued by butterflies, bees, and other pollinators. The painting keeps it in community: milkweed with fritillaries, grasses, black-eyed Susans, stone, and reflected water, all part of the summer edge where insects gather because the right plant is blooming.
Cumberland Azalea on Purple Sandstone matte canvas artwork with orange blooms above emerald water
Full artwork
Close detail of Cumberland Azalea orange blooms and dark purple sandstone brushwork
Azalea bloom detail
Close detail of Cumberland Azalea, purple sandstone, and emerald reflected water
Sandstone and water detail

01 / Sandstone bankline

Cumberland Azalea on Purple Sandstone

Cumberland Azalea, Rhododendron cumberlandense

They are amazing. I was fascinated before I understood how specific this plant was. The more I learned, the more fascinated I became.

This painting holds the moment when bright orange azalea blooms meet purple sandstone and green lake water. It also holds what happened after: research, conversations, and people remembering places where they had seen Cumberland Azaleas decades ago.

Habitat noteCumberland Azalea is a Southern Appalachian endemic. Here it belongs to steep rock, reflected water, and the kind of bank that makes you stop and look up.

View the canvas print

Matte canvas print, $59-$259.

02 / Clear creek shade

Great Laurel Over Clear Creek

Great Laurel, Rhododendron maximum

We always called them rhododendrons. I am amazed by the native white blooms, but the real pull is the place around them: mosses and ferns, dark creek edges, water half hidden under evergreen branches.

This is one of my favorite kinds of places because everything feels tucked in. The sound changes under the leaves. Ferns and mosses take over. The creek is close, but it is not performing for you; it is just moving quietly through the shade.

Great Laurel can make a creek feel secret even when you are standing right beside it. The blooms are bright, but the painting is also about cool reflected water and that tunneled feeling along Appalachian streams.

Habitat noteGreat Laurel often forms dense evergreen cover along creeks, making filtered light and white blooms part of the same quiet corridor.

View the canvas print

Matte canvas print, $49-$189.

Great Laurel Over Clear Creek artwork with white rhododendron blooms above clear Appalachian water
Full artwork
Close detail of clear creek stones and reflected Appalachian water
Creek stone detail
Close detail of Great Laurel blooms over clear creek reflections
Laurel bloom detail
Beneath Ancient Leaves umbrella magnolia artwork with large green leaves, ferns, and filtered rain light
Full artwork
Close detail of Umbrella Magnolia flower, ferns, and filtered green light
Magnolia bloom detail
Close detail of Umbrella Magnolia leaves and rain light in green Appalachian understory
Canopy detail

03 / Shelter under leaves

Beneath Ancient Leaves

Umbrella Magnolia, Magnolia tripetala

Umbrella Magnolias are magical to me and always have been. Nathan and I have waited out the rain under them, and that memory is really the center of this painting.

It is a different kind of shelter than a porch or a roof. It is wet, green, temporary, and alive. You become aware of the leaves above you as architecture.

They are magical in the way they pop up as straight sticks with no leaves, then build a massive canopy out of gigantic leaves. The flower is there, but the shelter is the subject: rain light, ferns, leaf architecture, and a cove that feels older than the trail you took to get there.

Habitat noteUmbrella Magnolia has some of the largest leaves of any native eastern tree. In the painting, those leaves become living shelter.

View the canvas print

Matte canvas print, $49-$199.

04 / Pollinator gathering place

Where the Fritillaries Gather

Butterfly Milkweed, Asclepias tuberosa, with Great Spangled Fritillaries

The butterflies are not decoration. I wanted them doing what they would naturally do, because the painting is about a relationship.

Butterfly Milkweed, fritillaries, grasses, black-eyed Susans, rocks, and blue-green reflected water all belong to the same summer place. This piece is the brightest one in the group, but it still comes from the same question: what ingredients have to be present for this living thing to thrive?

Habitat noteButterfly Milkweed supports native pollinators across Appalachia. The painting treats the pollinators as part of the subject, not an ornament added later.

View the canvas print

Matte canvas print, $49-$189.

Where the Fritillaries Gather butterfly milkweed artwork with orange blooms, butterflies, rocks, and blue-green water
Full artwork
Close detail of a fritillary butterfly near orange butterfly milkweed blooms
Fritillary detail
Close detail of Butterfly Milkweed blooms, grasses, and reflected blue-green water
Milkweed and stone detail

Water is doing the work

This collection belongs beside the lake paintings.

Water is not background in these paintings. It changes the color of everything around it. Creek reflections cool the whites of Great Laurel. Emerald lake water glows beneath Cumberland Azalea. Blue-green reflected light moves through the milkweed and grasses. Even beneath the Umbrella Magnolia, moisture and filtered rain light shape the atmosphere.

That is why these botanical paintings still feel like Lakehouse Portrait Co. They are about what water does to a place, and what you notice when you slow down long enough to see it.

Great Laurel detail with white bloom, clear creek stones, and reflected blue-green water
Clear creek water and bloom detail

Why these became paintings

Some discoveries stay photographs.

Others keep tugging at me after I get home. These four stayed with me long enough to become paintings: the orange azalea on stone, the white blooms over hidden water, the magnolia leaves that felt like shelter, and the milkweed where the fritillaries gathered.

The painting is what happens when a place keeps asking to be looked at again.

Matte canvas prints

Four native Appalachian botanical prints.

Each print is made on matte canvas with finished wrapped sides, chosen in sizes that protect the shape of the original artwork as much as possible.

An archive of noticing

Native plants, remembered in place.

Appalachian Botanicals is a small archive of things noticed while exploring Appalachian water: flowers on a bank, white blooms over a creek, leaves big enough to wait out rain beneath, butterflies gathering where the right plant is blooming.

Shop Appalachian Botanicals