Thanks to Jinghua Dalia's horsehair brush, Chinese peonies, roses and wisteria are blossoming inside Tower Hill Botanic Garden.

As if riding warm breezes, yellow-bodied bees buzz about sniffing for nectar in her delicate watercolors. Perched on a branch, a black-eyed warbler waits for an insect lunch.

The Taiwan-born artist invites visitors to enjoy "The Poetry of a Chinese Watercolor Spring," her current exhibit of 50 paintings on display in the garden's Alice Milton Gallery.

"My influences are real flowers and real nature," Dalia said from her home studio in Pepperell. "Every time I paint it's like a Buddhist meditation."

The roots of her flowers reach back to Taiwan and China, where five generations of artists in her family studied under masters of painting and calligraphy.

Born Gao Jinghua in Taipei, Taiwan, she was initially trained by her father Gao Yihung, an eminent artist who taught calligraphy to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's son, who succeeded his father as president.

She earned a fine arts degree from National Taiwan Normal University and later earned a graduate degree in art from the University of Hawaii.

As if disproving the old adage East and West can never meet, Dalia paints flowers and landscapes that fuse the skills and spirit of traditional Chinese brush painting with bolder Western colors and contemporary composition and perspectives.

Dalia described her paintings as "poetic expressions" that seek to reflect the harmonious interaction of yin and yang, fundamental yet opposing forces that govern nature.

"I see nature in this traditional sense, not as a 'still life' but in its most profound relationship to humankind as the sustainer of life and the source of life's deepest meaning," she said.

Dalia said she attempts to capture not just a flower's anatomical complexity but the ephemeral emotions it evokes.

"If I don't have the flower I want to paint, I go into my neighbor's garden. I watch and watch until people think I'm crazy," she said, laughing. "I sketch a little in my mind and try to remember all their petals and filaments and how they fit together. Then I go home right away and put them in my sketch book."

Michael Arnum said Dalia is the first of three artists who will be showing their work in the center's perennial "Art in the Garden" series.

"Jinghua showed her paintings here a few years ago and she was very well received. Her work is very detailed botanically and wonderfully conveys the mood of her garden scenes," said Arnum, Tower Hill's public relations director.

He said Dalia's paintings, which are for sale, complement some of Tower Hill's "Chinese influences" such as the lanterns hanging in exterior gardens or the Chinese witch hazel and tree peonies planted outside.

Arnum said Portland artist Sarah Lynn Richards, one of the country's premier equine artists, will open "Creatures Great and Small" on Sunday, June 21. And on Thursday, July 30, Ellen Hoverkamp will open an exhibit of her "scanner photography" in which images of flowers are produced on a flatbed scanner.

Like the flowers she paints, Dalia's own roots reach back into Taiwan and China.

She can remember sneaking under her father's writing desk as he was teaching his students how to paint.

"I was only in the third grade. But I felt fascinated to see the effect of paint and ink on rice paper. If my father added just a little water, the flower changed its whole appearance. If it wasn't the exact amount, it just became a mess," she said.

The second of six children, she was the only one in her family to dedicate her life to art.

"Maybe it was in my blood that I have that interest in painting. I'm so proud to carry on what my father did," said Dalia, who now uses the surname of her husband, author Albert Dalia.

While teaching art to nuns in a temple in the late 1970s, she met her soon-to-be husband who was then studying Buddhism in Taiwan and they married in 1978. The couple, who moved to Massachusetts in 1997 after many years abroad, have a daughter, Amanda, and son, Alden. Albert Dalia, who has a doctorate in Chinese history, has used his knowledge of China to write several novels, including "Dream of the Dragon Pool," in an ancient style sometimes translated as "tales of knights errant."

For Jinghua Dalia, whose name means "tranquility," Chinese brush painting demands the discipline of martial arts and the serenity of Zen meditation.

"Painting on rice paper is like painting on a kitchen towel. You can't correct mistakes. If I paint some flowers and then paint a bird but get its beak wrong at the end, I have to throw it away," she said.

Asked if she used Chinese or Western techniques to overcome such a problem, Dalia laughed and replied, "Now I paint the beak first."