Introduction

Botanical art has been depicted by artists, naturalists, and botanists for millennia.  We have countless drawings, illustrations, paintings, and prints as well as many other portrayals of the earth's magnificent flora and vegetation.

Through my artistic practice of eco-printing, I have explored the processes of recording the actual 'fossil' prints of plants, specifically the leaves that give us our atmosphere, literally the air we breathe.

In his paper, Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology, TJ Demos investigates "the intersection of art criticism, politico-ecological theory, environmental activism, and post-colonial globalisation."  (Demos:2013) Expanding, political ecology refers to numerous competing schemes or proposals for the environment, its agency, and the social configuration of these formations which are brought together by a common ground of a philosophical and incorporative scientific-cultural criticality which when combined with contemporary art expresses and illustrates an eco-aesthetic which re-examines the politics of art's connection to nature and of the biosphere's intricate relationship to every single aspect of our human existence.

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In what Paul J. Crutzen (2002) defines as the 'Anthropocene epoch' describes how human activity and action now, for the first time in history, has a dominant and direct impact on biochemical and physical processes on Earth, becoming for the first time in Earth's history "has shaken Earth's life systems with a profundity that paleontologist Antony Barnosky has likened to an asteroid strike" (Mitman et al (eds):2018).  Within the Anthropocene, we are now in the midst of a dual climate and biodiversity crisis whereby mankind is not only a part of but directly disturbing and destroying the complex cycles of nature as well as placing them directly out of critical balance.