Page 56 - Tropic Magazine Issue 31

TROPIC • ARTS

Flora, fauna

and fiction

EXHIBITIONS
Cairns Art Gallery is hosting
two strikingly different bodies
of work, yet each share stories
of the environment – both
natural and imagined.

1

William T. Cooper
Botanical art from the
tropical rainforest
28 August – 5 December 2021
He drew from life,
In an exciting exhibition featuring one
of Tropical North Queensland’s most something he was
renowned artists, the Gallery is hosting passionate about, rather
an extraordinary collection of paintings
and sketches by William T. Cooper. than working from
Once described by Sir David photographs
Attenborough as the "world's greatest
living wildlife illustrator," William T. Wendy Cooper
Cooper AO (1934 – 2015) is nationally and
internationally recognised as a proficient
and talented botanical and bird artist. It is important to note that Wendy was
His illustrations have been widely a major contributor to the work of her
published and his works are held in life-long partner. In 1987, when they left
collections across the world, including an their early marital home in Bungwahl in
extensive holding in the National Library New South Wales to live in Topaz on the
of Australia. Atherton Tablelands, Wendy joined Bill in
His wife Wendy has taken an active learning about the fruits and plants of the
role as co-curator for this exhibition, surrounding forests. “Bill always wanted
selecting more than a hundred works to tell a story in his paintings, with the
that not only explore Cooper’s deep botanical component as part of that
understanding and love of bird life, but story,” Wendy explains.
also beautifully describe, in accurate “He rarely painted plants as completed
detail, the flora of their natural habitat. botanical illustrations … however
While the compositions are aesthetically hundreds of working drawings were
exquisite, it is the botanical and made opportunistically for potential use
anatomical accuracy of both the plants in his paintings. It was hoped that the
and the bird life that positions Cooper as stored drawings might reduce the need to
a contemporary botanical artist dash out urgently to find plants relevant
without equal. to a proposed painting.”

56 • Tropic • Issue 31