New Church Life Jan/Feb 2014 | Page 49

A New Blog by the Rev. Frank S. Rose Rev. Walter E. Orthwein L andscape paintings by the Rev. Frank Rose are proudly displayed on the walls of many New Church homes, churches and schools. Now, having retired from the pulpit in Tucson, he has found a whole new career as a painter and photographer of flowers and trees in Arizona. He has also given a number of lectures on nature in Arizona. “It has really given me a lot of interest and satisfaction in my retirement,” he says. Beautiful and interesting examples of Mr. Rose’s artwork may be viewed by visiting his new blog at: franksrose.com The artwork is the fruit of careful observation while hiking in the mountains, canyons and deserts. Botanists in Arizona have found his records of the local plants to be unique and important scientifically, as well as artistically, and encouraged him to publish them. On his blog, the photographs and paintings are accompanied by scientific notes on the vegetation, as well as personal comments and warm human interest stories of meetings with fellow hikers and nature lovers. “When we arrived in Tucson, 31 years ago,” Frank explains, “one of the things the small congregation did was to think of activities besides Sunday worship. We came up with a plan for church hikes, which we carried on, more or less once a week, for more than 20 years” – until many of the participants were forced to drop out for health reasons. He explains in the preface to his first book, Mountain Wildflowers of Southern Arizona, that he originally set out to do watercolor paintings of all the flower species in the Catalina Mountains – the top of which is Mt. Lemmon, overlooking the city of Tucson. “My wife and I have spent many vacations there. We hike in the morning, and then I do watercolors in the afternoon. One of the challenges of painting is deciding what to paint next, and that is when I decided to paint flowers.” Later, Frank was invited to do watercolor paintings of the plants in the book, Herbal Medicine of the American Southwest, by Charlie Kane. He did 45