Westport artist Richard Rauh working on one of his paintings last year. / File photo

WESTPORT — Life is short, art is long.

But for admirers of Westport artist Richard Rauh and his work, a more accurate version of that familiar axiom would be: Life is long, art is longer.

That’s because at 97 years of age, Rauh continues to paint meticulous images of botanical subjects, a body of work that has been honored for its artistic merit and enduring appeal.

Paintings by Rauh will be featured in a new exhibit, “A Botanical Retrospective,” opening Monday, Dec. 5, and running through the end of February 2023 in the Westport Library’s Sheffer Gallery.

One of the paintings by Richard Rauh that will be exhibited at the Westport Library starting Dec. 5.

A reception featuring Rauh in conversation with another Westport artist, Miggs Burroughs, is planned at 2 p.m. Jan. 29, in the library. To register for the event, click here.

Rauh, who took up botanical painting in retirement after a career in motion-pictures’ special effects, won a gold medal and “Best in Show” award at the 2006 Royal Horticultural Society Show in London. His work is in the permanent collections of the Lindley Library in London, the Shirley Sherwood Collection in Kew Gardens, Queens, the New York State Museum and the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie Mellon University. 

He has been an instructor in the botanical illustration certificate program at the New York Botanical Gardens since 1994, and was named its Teacher of the Year in 2010. He also teaches at area senior centers.

“I am extremely fortunate to be granted the ability to continue to function as well as I do as the years pass,” Rauh said in a library publicity release for the exhibit.

“Spread along these walls are the results of what I have observed looking closely at flowers over the years. Whether in my quest for the accurate I have managed to bring a personal statement is for you to judge,” he said. 

“It is enough for me that you will look at flowers in a way you never have before.” 

Rauh “is a local treasure, and we are absolutely thrilled to host this retrospective of his larger-than-life, beautifully detailed botanical paintings in the Sheffer Gallery,” Carole Erger-Fass, exhibits curator at the library, said in the press statement.

For more information, call the Westport Library at 203-291-4800.

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