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| Sarah Simblet, sketchbook study for Botany for the Artist |
Sarah is a fine artist, writer,
broadcaster and anatomist, whose work explores the relationship between
science, history and art i. As an academic consultant she has co-selected or
contributed to national and international art and science exhibitions at venues
such as the Wellcome Trust and Science Museum, and in broadcasting she
contributes regularly to BBC radio and television debates about the
relationship between science and art ii.
I was eager to meet with Sarah due to her expertise in botany and her combined interests in art, history and science. She has written and illustrated several books, including Botany for the Artist: An Inspirational Guide to Drawing Plants (2010). It was an enriching day spent talking to her about her work - looking at sketches, sketchbooks and finished drawings; storyboards for publications; and hearing about her methodologies for working with plant specimens.
Sarah's exquisite and meticulous, anatomical approach to drawing plants is inspiring. In my practice, I'm conscious of aspiring to precision and exactitude, while the materials I use, combined with limitations of dexterity result in works that veer away from scientific accuracy to embrace distortions and errors. When they work best, I think, it's because they retain a specificity of trying really hard to communicate something, while absorbing selective references that enter the work as a result of looking, finding connections and playing with ideas and materials. Sarah's approach and skills are very different and this holds an attraction and fascination.
I was eager to meet with Sarah due to her expertise in botany and her combined interests in art, history and science. She has written and illustrated several books, including Botany for the Artist: An Inspirational Guide to Drawing Plants (2010). It was an enriching day spent talking to her about her work - looking at sketches, sketchbooks and finished drawings; storyboards for publications; and hearing about her methodologies for working with plant specimens.
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| Sarah's pocket-size paper pages with sketches planning the layout for Botany for the Artist |
Sarah's exquisite and meticulous, anatomical approach to drawing plants is inspiring. In my practice, I'm conscious of aspiring to precision and exactitude, while the materials I use, combined with limitations of dexterity result in works that veer away from scientific accuracy to embrace distortions and errors. When they work best, I think, it's because they retain a specificity of trying really hard to communicate something, while absorbing selective references that enter the work as a result of looking, finding connections and playing with ideas and materials. Sarah's approach and skills are very different and this holds an attraction and fascination.
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| Cross-section of a pine cone |
I gleaned much from hearing her talk about how she works with plant specimens - holding them in her hand, to get a sense of how they feel, how they shift and wilt - haptic information from one hand mediated and synthesised through looking, to be recorded on the page with the other. The best way to learn about how plants are constructed, Sarah advised, is to pull them apart - revealing where and how the component parts are joined together.
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| Schematic diagrams of inflorescences, showing how they branch. 'They act as a simplified key. In each diagram the largest circle indicates the first flower to open, and the successively smaller circles show the sequence in which the following flowers open and then bear fruit'. See Botany for the Artist, p. 187. |
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| A page from one of Sarah's hand-bound sketchbooks. Images (here a sketch planning her garden) are reworked by pasting new sections of paper onto the page, which can be lifted up to view the original idea/sketch underneath. |
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Spread from Botany for the Artist
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As in the right hand side images above, cutting a flower part in half longitudinally reveals the inner structure of its anatomy, showing the symmetry or, less often, the asymmetry of the plant. The specimen takes on the form of a diagram of itself, which can be simplified and clarified through drawing, and which become, in my mind, like machine mechanisms, making me think of the strange machine drawings and relief works of Eva Hesse.
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| Left: Eva Hesse 'No Title', 1965. Right: 'Oomamaboomba', 1965. Images taken from Hauser & Wirth website. Arthur Harry Church Following a recommendation from Sarah, I arranged a visit to the Natural History Museum library, to look at boxes of drawings and the original manuscripts of Church. Further details to follow in a separate post. |
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| Arthur Harry Church, Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia purpurea L., 7 May 1905 |
Book suggestions and follow-up research:
