Christine Lemor-Drake – COVID, SUMI and KANJI

Reception/First Tuesday ArtWalk:
* October 4, 5:30 – 7:30 pm

Exhibition Dates:
* October 3 – 28

Botanical artist Christine Lemor-Drake shows works created during COVID confinement.

Born and raised in France, in the Bay Area since 1990, Christine Lemor-Drake, aka Chlem, grew up in a family obsessed by visual arts as the patriarch was a painter, engraver, art teacher and art collector.

She spent all her vacations in her great-grandparents’ bountiful garden, observing trees, fruits and vegetables. She worked as an occupational therapist in France, learning 40 crafts and as a translator/interpreter in the US. Her mother and two siblings started painting at retirement as well.

She started in 2015 with a nature journaling class, followed by Mary L. Harden School of Botanical Illustration curriculum, to get some tools and techniques, as she was not very pleased with the first bird she drew! She learned to observe and to use pencils, pen and ink and watercolor. In 2018, she received her Certificate of Botanical Illustration.

During these three years, she participated in over twenty group exhibits in California, mostly juried, with her botanical art.

During COVID, she studied Japanese Sumi-e and Kanji calligraphy with Master Fumiyo Yoshikawa and Japanese with Duolingo.  During that time, she painted watercolors of the view from her studio showing the various weathers and moods of the ocean, the sky and the forest.