The Secret Garden

It is with a great deal of pleasure that Taylor-Jensen Fine Arts brings the work of Susan Worthington to this region. The Secret Garden – Botanical Illustrations by Susan Worthington is a must see! Susan Worthington is an award winning New Zealand botanical painter who has won acclaim for her work here and abroad. This exhibition, Ms Worthington’s first in the Manawatu

“Plants and paintbrushes have had parallel space in my life,” recounts artist Susan Worthington, “but it is only in the last seven years that they have come together. I grew up with grandmothers and a mother who took their gardening seriously. Life followed with its ups and downs; in 1986 I enrolled at Auckland’s Whitecliffe Art School gaining a Diploma of Art with Honours followed by three years at Auckland University where I obtained a Bachelor of Arts in English and Art History.” Susan followed that with a Teaching Diploma from Auckland Teachers’ Training College and taught adult students for the next ten years.

After returning to Taranaki, she had the opportunity to travel to England to study botanical art, a subject not offered in New Zealand. On returning home, Susan put what she had learned into practice but found she needed to know still more and returned to England for two weeks of intensive study at Kew Gardens. Back in New Zealand again she painted native plants from the Pukeiti Garden. She exhibited these works at the Royal Horticultural Show in London and was awarded a Silver Medal. One of her paintings was sold and became part of the exhibition ‘A New Flowering, 1000 Years of Botanical Art’, at the Ashmolian Museum in Oxford.

In 2004, six of Ms Worthington’s paintings of garden flowers, hybridised in New Zealand, were used by New Zealand Post on a set of postage stamps. The artist exhibited a collection of rhododendron [variety Vireya] paintings at the Royal Horticultural Society’s 2005 Botanical Art Display at the BBC Garden World Show in Birmingham, England, where they were awarded a silver medal. In January 2006 she studied Botanical Painting at the English Gardening School, Chelsea Physic Garden and was awarded a Diploma with Distinction. In 2007 one of her paintings was included in the Highgrove Florilegium, a two album set of which only 175 were printed. Funds raised from sales went to The Prince’s Trust.

The artist again took paintings to the BBC Garden World Show in 2008 and gained another silver medal. Since then two more of her paintings were included in the most recent Highgrove Florilegium which featured shrubs and trees. A highlight of her 2009 visit to England was meeting Prince Charles at Highgrove, his country estate.

To create the magic that is botanical illustration, a plant is first selected for recording and the flowers and leaves are measured and drawn accurately, leaving nothing out. After transferring the drawing to fine watercolour paper, the colours are carefully matched and deciding on the composition is the next step. As the artist is often working with dying models, there is sometimes not much time to record and paint a plant. Ms Worthington has spent time at the Kew Herbarium to learn how to store plant specimens as she is fortunate to be given rare plant material to paint and needed to know how to store it so that she could draw and paint it in a different way in the future if need be.

Only botanical artists with exceptional ability from around the world are invited to submit paintings to be included in the Highgrove Florilegium. Approximately 30% of paintings submitted are accepted and not many of these have the unanimous approval of the 15 member committee. An email confirming one of Susan’s paintings selected for publication stated her work was deemed “a most beautiful, sensitive and refined painting. You were applauded for the tonal ranges that made the inflorescence so three dimensional.” The selection was unanimous! Informally the artist has learned that the work was among the top five received for assessment.

Event listed by Stuart Schwartz

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