Original painting, 8" x 10" acrylic paint and natural earth pigment paint on wooden palette.
This painting Pink Ginger Flower is apart of the first collection in my (Her)balism project. My (Her)balism project is a story of a women empowering herself through her relationship to plants and art. I was incredibly ill for the better part of a year, and holistic natural medicine really pulled through to heal my body. The experience influenced me to start learning herbalism with Commonwealth Herbs and that’s how the (Her)balism project was born. I’m getting to know new healing plants and creating visual artworks to process my experience. Join Patreon.com/myrandastormstudios to watch all my (Her)balism experiments and time-lapse videos of my art.
Here is also my Monograph for Ginger!!
GingerZingiber officinale
hot, dry, relaxant
Taste: pungent, aromatic, spicy
Family: Zingiberaceae
Medicinal parts: rhizome
Actions: stimulant, carminative, rubefacient, diffusive, relaxant, antispasmodic, stomachic, antiemetic, anodyne, emmenagogue, diaphoretic
Affinities: digestive, circulatory, and reproductive systems
Medicinal applications
· supports healthy gastrointestinal function.
· reduces spasms and constrictions.
· Aids with nausea, including those induced by food poisoning, medications, morning sickness and motion sickness.
· helpful for encouraging a healthy fever response to infection.
· Emmenagogue, warming and soothing for uterine cramping. Encourages blood flow when experiencing slow menstrual flow.
· Topically stimulates blood flow, improves circulation, nourishing tissues and clearing away stagnant fluids, while reducing pain.
· Helpful for constriction-type headaches such as tension headaches, migraines, cluster headaches.
In practice:
· commonly included in tea blends for painful menstrual cycles with scant bleeding
· For nausea try a tincture or candied ginger.
· Fresh ginger is diffusive, moving blood and warmth outwards to the surface
· Dried ginger is centrally warming, heating the digestive and reproductive systems.
Anecdotal evidence:
· In 2020 I had systemic inflammation and a stressed small intestine, endocrine system and gallbladder. I would get episodes of nausea every morning for 2-4 hours, ginger was a helpful support along my road to recovery. I took 3-4 pre-made ginger lozenges with 340 mg ginger dried root. It was the most effective method I found to calm my system, its anti-spasmatic actions and soothing qualities were invaluable. Since then, I’ve experimented with taking homemade honey-candied ginger and ginger infused honey and it worked as efficiently as store bought ginger lozenges for nausea.
· As a visual artist, I decided to learn more about ginger by creating artwork about it. I took reference photos at the Bloedel Conversatory and the flowers were a powerful bold red, which seemed to reflect the warming, activating nature of ginger itself. The patterns of the petals spiraled upward, which made me think of its diffusive action, bringing warmth outward. Even going into the warm tropical conservatory brought me closer to this idea of who ginger could be
.Cautions: Ginger has a blood thinning effect; use caution if taking blood-thinning medications.
Ginger’s emmenagogue action will increase the menstrual flow of those with already heavy cycles.
Friends: turmeric, galangal, cardamom, chamomile, fennel, garlic, calamus