With a joint degree in Art and Sciences, the professional beginnings of Doris Downes were in the graphic design field as the art director of Newsweek, Conde Nast Publications and Hearst/Wall Street Journal. She was also the creative director of the prestigious auction house Sotheby's before devoting herself passionately and completely to her career as an artist, specialising in botanical subjects. Some of her works have been recently exhibited in the historical Sala Parés in Barcelona, a city much loved by this American artist. Many times in the historiography of art, botanical subjects have been underestimated in comparison with landscapes or the human figure. Doris Downes shows us with her watercolours that such a valuation is unfair by bringing to this genre the skill that it demands and that it used to show in past times.