This was published 7 years ago
Royal Botanic Garden's Botanica exhibition a study in artistic truth
By Nick Galvin
Visitors to this year's Botanica exhibition at the Royal Botanic Garden are drawn almost irresistibly to Angela Lober's remarkable depiction of a Gymea lily that faces them as they walk in the door.
The dramatic work captures the viewer not only with its extraordinarily detailed rendering of the flowering head but also by the curious impression of character.
Angela Lober with her work at the Royal Botanic Garden.Credit: Steven Siewert
"I really wanted to try and give it some personality and have it emerging like this creature out of the darkness," Lober says.
Appropriately enough for such a slow-growing species, Lober took two years on-and-off to complete the work.
Artist Lillian Webb with her work.Credit: Steven Siewert
"It's almost too depressing to put the hours to it but it would have to be three or four hundred hours in that piece," she says. "You do have to put it away for a while and then come back to it.
"It's my personality to be a bit of a perfectionist and very patient. It's my therapy. I do feel if I'm not painting everyday and really miss it."
Lober, who has been exhibiting at the Royal Botanic Garden for more than 15 years, says the painstaking work of botanical illustration suits her perfectly.
"It's my personality to be a bit of a perfectionist and very patient.," she says. "It's my therapy. I do feel if I'm not painting everyday and really miss it."
Curator Judy Dunstan is behind this year's theme, "In sickness and in health".
"I thought that sickness and health was a really good story, that a plant can be a poison or a medicine," she says.
The artists' responses to the theme vary from the gorgeously different colours of a selection of Autumn fungi to a delicately detailed cannabis sativa plant.
There is also work from students, many from the natural history illustration course at Newcastle University.
Student Lillian Webb is thrilled to be included in the show for the first time with her graphite and watercolour work depicting finger limes.
"I've been drawing all my life," says the 22-year-old, who has also produced her own children's book. "I really love botanical art even though I'm just starting out."
All the works are grouped under the banner of botanical art, which differs in approach from botanical illustration, although the two can be very close at times.
"Strict scientific illustration goes way, way back when it was needed to illustrate plants for herbals so you didn't use the wrong plant and poison somebody you were trying to cure or feed," Dunstan says.
"And you can show the life of a plant in one page because you can show it from the flower to the seed to the fruit, which no photograph could do."
Botanical art, while also strictly accurate, places more emphasis on aesthetics and, at least in Lober's case, personality.
"Maybe I should enter him in the Archibald Prize," she laughs.
Botanica: In Sickness and in Heath is at Lion Gate Lodge in the Royal Botanic Garden until May 28