Above: a section of Sue Wickison’s watercolour painting of Pomegranate Flowers with Immature Fruit.
Sue Wickison is a celebrated botanical artist based in New Zealand who is committed to capturing the intricate detail and beauty of plants from around the globe. Her passion for natural history was instilled at a young age during her upbringing in Sierra Leone, West Africa, where her father, an amateur botanist and artist, would take her on expeditions to locate, identify, and collect botanical specimens.
Sue’s dedication to illustrating the natural world has garnered praise from art critics and botanists alike. Over her career, Sue has travelled extensively to places such as the Solomon Islands, Nepal, and Vanuatu to create illustrated books for their respective departments of Agriculture and Forestry. She has also designed over 50 natural history stamps for a variety of Pacific countries, including New Zealand.
Recently, Sue has focused her attention on the project Plants of the Qur’ān, which is a collaboration alongside Kew scientist Dr Shahina Ghazanfar. Over the last few years, they have worked together to conduct extensive research into the plants referenced in the Qur’ān, investigating their uses in areas such as medicine, cuisine, and horticulture across the world. This project demonstrates Sue’s ongoing commitment to illustrating and cataloguing plant species of cultural and religious significance. It has taken her from the Empty Quarter in Abu Dhabi, through the deserts of Sharjah, and the mountains of Oman, as well as to remote farms, all in search of the right specimens to illustrate. Sue notes that it is crucial to work from living materials, both to protect the project’s authenticity and ensure the required level of accuracy for scientific illustrations.
Culminating in a book (authored by Dr Shahina Ghazanfar and illustrated by Sue Wickison) and an exhibition, Plants of the Qur’ān showcases the cultural importance of these plants, delving into their traditional and present-day uses while providing context to their significance. The exhibition is hosted by Kew Gardens and recently opened to the public on 1st April. It features 25 original paintings that reveal Sue’s journey illustrating the Plants of the Qur’ān. You can learn more about this fascinating project by watching the video below:
After six years of researching, sourcing, and illustrating the many plants which are described in the Qur’ān, it’s wonderful to be able to celebrate the culmination of this work with this new exhibition. Having worked as a botanical illustrator at Kew Gardens for almost ten years, I’m really thrilled to be showcasing these new paintings in a place which is very special to me, collaborating with Dr Shahina Ghazanfar on this unique project.
– Sue Wickison, 2023
Before the originals were shipped to the UK for the exhibition, Sue enlisted NZMS to digitise the watercolour paintings. This allowed her to digitally preserve her original artworks in high resolution – not only producing copies for her own records but also generating incredibly accurate reproductions for inclusion in the book. Digitising artwork involves using specialised scanning equipment to create a digital copy for reproduction, distribution, and archiving.
To maintain the level of detail visible in Sue’s botanical illustrations, our team opted to scan them using a 100-megapixel medium format camera. We captured each painting in tile sections before digitally stitching them together to form a single image with extremely high resolution. Extensive colour matching was also undertaken to ensure that the digitised version of the artwork was as close to the original as possible.
Right: zoomed to 100% to show the extremely high level of detail captured through digitisation.
Since the original paintings needed to be shipped to Kew Gardens for the exhibition, our team made numerous test strips during the colour-matching process so that the book printers had an accurate reference guide to the originals. The resulting digital images are incredibly detailed and true-to-life, capturing every brushstroke and colour variation in Sue’s work.
Working alongside Sue to digitise her stunning botanical illustrations was a delightful experience for our team, and we are eagerly anticipating the book’s publication! Sue’s illustrations in Plants of the Qur’ān not only offer viewers a unique opportunity to view a range of flora in incredible detail, but it also serves as an important historical record of these plants that hold significant cultural value.
The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens is hosting the exhibition Plants of the Qur’ān from April 1st until September 17th, 2023.