Featuring a selection of accepted natural species, natural hybrids, and cultivars, chosen to celebrate their abundant diversity, the following paintings represent only a handful of Sempervivum amongst a few thousand. Their intricate geometric patterns and logarithmic leaf spirals of Sempervivum, their multiple survival techniques, textures and colours, and their rosette growth, inspired me to paint the Sempervivum portraits.

Sempervivum evolved in response to extreme climatic changes at high altitudes where food and water is scarce. According to where the plants are naturally geographically located, the plants mutated over time to develop numerous and precise characteristics to survive freezing winters, hot summers and the vivacious appetites of mammals and insects.
Some plants are recognisable by hair filaments growing as soft down covering the leaves and stem and other varieties have eccentric tufts and swirls often sometimes covering the entire plant. Others have spikes covering their leaves, others vary between supple nodes protruding from the leaf tips, others have vicious jagged edges and others are smooth.