A Passion for Plants

Contemporary botanical masterworks from the Shirley Sherwood Collection

Pamela Stagg, Tall Bearded Iris “Going My Way” ©Shirley Sherwood Collection

Filled with winding stems, bursting flowers and the fractal-linear patterns of exotic leaves, the “Passion For Plants” exhibition at Shinjuku’s Seiji Togo Museum blooms with imagery from the painted fields of the world’s most renowned botanical artists. The show’s 120-plus works tell the story of an art world that’s often left out of mainstream museums.

“Passion” is a traveling exhibition of paintings and drawings from the collection of British botanist Shirley Sherwood.

A professor at the University of Oxford, Sherwood has particular affection for not only the subjects of these works but also the artists who create them. The collection brings together artists she has met in travels around the world who have dedicated their lives to recording the vivid flowers and twisting roots of all manner of flora.

This traditionally academic art form has made a comeback of sorts in recent years, as many people have come to see the painstakingly executed blends of watercolor and acrylic as symbols of a slower life and closeness to nature. The artists aren’t so much interested in discovering and applying new methods of painting as they are in using traditional techniques of seeing to understand and investigate their subjects. The omnipresent energy of the artist’s eye beams throughout the gallery, and it is easy to simply marvel at the power of flawless craftsmanship. Each painting is humbling as it reflects the intensely focused and visually obsessive relationship between artist and subject.

Stephanie Berni, Australian Tree Fern: Dicksonia Antarctica ©Shirley Sherwood Collection 2004

Brigid Edwards, Cape Gooseberry ©Shirley Sherwood Collection 1995

After 50 or 60 pieces, however, the uniformity of technique does tend to dull the senses, and one longs to hold the actual plants. But this regularity ultimately dictates that the subject is absolute priority. One is meant to marvel at the forms depicted and not at the artist, as each flawless picture guides us deeper and deeper into nature’s spectacle.

The benefit of this attention to minutiae is felt in a work such as Daphne Gradigels’ Development of Honesty (“Honesty” refers to the plant, not the virtue). Laid out in a rigid grid on a greeting card-sized piece of paper, this finely rendered watercolor tracks the reproductive process of the plant from flowering blossom to decaying seedpod. The details of the work speak for themselves in clear tones of reverent natural history.

However, the artist’s hand is not entirely absent in the show, and when it does appear, the effect is all the more jarring. Works like Ann Schweizer’s free-flowing watercolor Ficus sur or Margaret Mee’s Pinheros, in which sketchy lines reveal the impulses of artistic decision-making, seem to breathe a more spontaneous life into the plants they portray.

Each of the meticulous observations is as illuminating as the life form it represents. Even as we may tire of the painterly perfection, it is still easy to become lost admiring the technical mastery and artistic presence filling each of the works. Yet undoubtedly what we marvel at most are the unimaginable structures and appearances of natural plant life. The overwhelming diversity of form depicted throughout the exhibit makes for a biomimeticist’s dream, conjuring and illuminating the unending possibilities of the botanical world.

Seiji Togo Memorial Sompo Japan Museum of Art, until July 2. See exhibition listings (Shinjuku) for details.

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