Nurturing love of plants
Botanical artists exhibit special and diverse NZ natives, writes Dionne Christian
Mexican artist Frida Kahlo once said, “I paint flowers so they will not die.” That could well be the thinking behind a groundbreaking global exhibition using botanical art to link people with plants and get us thinking about safeguarding botanical diversity. New Zealand is one of 25 countries — from Australia to the United States and everywhere in between — participating in the Worldwide Day of Botanical Art on May 18.
Although that’s more than a month away, New Zealand’s exhibition opens this week and runs, in Auckland, until July before touring to Wellington, Blenheim and Christchurch. A total of 56 artworks — all of NZ native plants — from 42 artists, including three students from secondary schools, will hang at Auckland Botanic Gardens.
Judges Sri Benham, who started the Friends of Auckland Botanic Gardens Art Group, horticultural scientist Dr Ross Ferguson and Rebecca Stanley, the Gardens’ plant curator, chose them from 98 entries in all mediums and styles.
It shows botanical art is alive and well here, says one of the exhibition organisers and artists Lesley Alexander.
“It’s a niche genre but there are a lot of people sitting in their backyards or in home studios — fine artists to hobby artists — who are practising botanical art,” she says.
If there’s diversity in the work to be exhibited — everything from harakeke (flax) to puha (NZ sowthistle) — then the backgrounds of those producing work also makes for interesting reading.
Hamish Foote, for example, is a practising artist as well as a senior lecturer at Unitec’s School of Landscape Architecture; Sandra Morris is a well-known children’s book illustrator. Likewise, Sue Wickison, who was born and raised in Sierra Leone, works as an illustrator and has produced more than 50 natural history stamp designs for countries, including NZ, around the Pacific. Janet Marshall has been painting NZ birds and flora since 1970, when she produced painting for field guides on local birds; Maria Mercedes is a self-taught illustrator-crafter from Bogota, Colombia, who was a psychiatrist before swapping to a full-time art career nearly a decade ago.
Alexander, too, had an intriguing route into botanical drawing and teaching. Originally a paediatric nurse, she went to Australia on an OE for a year and admits she didn’t miss nursing. Returning to her United Kingdom home, Alexander, always interested in art, decided to study scientific illustration at Middlesex Polytechnic and eventually specialised in medical illustrating, drawing for textbooks and children’s non-fiction.
Producing intricate botanical art from a compact and light-filled home studio in West Auckland may seem a world away from standing in a lecture room with fellow students drawing skulls. However, Alexander admits to being fascinated by plants that may be past their prime — the old and decaying stuff, she says.
“I like plants when they are starting to fall apart because they’re really overlooked,” she says. “They’re beautiful in their own right; you might look at something and think it’s just plain brown but when you really look, there are all sorts of different shades. A flower in bloom is almost too perfect.”
Although they might have differing backgrounds and subject matters, Alexander says botanical artists need certain things in common — attention to detail and a willingness to spend “hours and hours” perfecting each work. She can spend up to 100 hours on one work.
Now the hope is New Zealanders will come out in force to see our Botanical Art Worldwide Ngai Tipu Taketake — Indigenous Flora exhibition.
“I want a lot of people to come and see and appreciate what we have got here in the way of native plants and how special they are,” says Alexander. “I hope then people will take more notice and more care of them.”