A Painter's Year in the Forests of Bhutan

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Bhutan, like its neighbor Tibet, snuggles into the Himalayas between
China and India. It is a country of windswept mountain passes, Buddhism,
and botanical wealth. Hellum, a Canadian with ties to the University of
Alberta and UBC, spent two years in Bhutan, capturing its essence in
words and watercolors.

His text is a necklace of verbal dioramas and impressions, each bead a
thoughtful sharing of what it was like to observe and be observed in
this exotic land. The gentle, introspective stance of Buddhism flavors
the narrative tone. More than 100 of Hellum’s watercolors of plants
and flowers are woven through the text and spill over into a visual
appendix. Although the plants were found and painted on location in this
remote “dragon kingdom,” many are familiar to Canadians: iris, pine,
willow, rose, rhododendron, jack-in-the-pulpit, and cosmos.

Hellum used the task of painting plants as a tool for concentration and
meditation, a means of approaching the Buddhist philosophies of living
in the present, of giving full play to the genius of the moment. The
layout and graphic design of the book are outstanding, a visual banquet
that does the seemingly contradictory tasks of capturing a sense of
tranquility while holding on to the lure of the exotic.