Palmerston North artist Darcelle Nesser launches book of drawings depicting the history of palm oil

Darcelle Nesser a year ago with her Peruvian-inspired bollard in George St, Palmerston North. "What I love is that no one has any idea what I'm going to go next because I don't." Photo / Judith Lacy

To say Darcelle Nesser embraces challenges is like saying Leonardo da Vinci could hold a paintbrush.

After being inspired by a photograph of an orangutan crossing a crocodile-infested river in Borneo, the Palmerston North artist spent about 10 months researching the impact palm oil has had on human history.

The result is the book Palm in Our Hands, a collection of 154 charcoal drawings. The drawings are on display at Square Edge Arts Centre until March 24.

When Nesser painted the orangutan a year ago it rekindled a childhood memory of learning about rainforests and becoming passionate about deforestation.

She wants the book to spark a sense of curiosity in people by using storytelling as a way of changing people’s ideas of the world.

She had to work out how to draw pictures for people to feel the history rather than just read the facts and discovered charcoal is a good medium for creating mood.

However, after 20 minutes of drawing her vision would start to go blurry due to how much she focused on the grains of charcoal. So she adopted a strict routine with adequate breaks.

Nesser tried to imagine the feelings of people involved in the cultivation and trade of palm oil. This intensity also meant she had to take a lot of breaks because it got quite heavy trying to imagine herself being ambushed, put on a ship and taken to a new land.

One of Darcelle Nesser's charcoal drawings from her book, Palm in Our Hands. The drawing shows a range of uses for palm oil. Nesser says the book is a travel guide into human history and the reader will decide how extensive their adventure is.

“It is one thing to read words on history and rewriting it with different words. It’s another thing to read words on history and then re-represent it in pictures.

“With each drawing, I had to place myself inside each frame, into the life of each person and feel what they might be feeling. This meant going as far as imagining what kind of a childhood that person has had, what they were thinking in their morning, what is going through their mind right now, what their aspirations are for their future.”

In the book, Nesser acknowledges the illustrators and historians who have captured the palm oil story over the centuries. “If I get asked if I could go back in time to meet someone from the past I would pick to meet all of you.”

Without their dedication to capturing that moment, we would not be able to get a feel for what it might have been like.

Nesser says the book drove her mad but every day she saw her orangutan painting, which reminded her why she started the project.

Palm oil is native to Africa and the book covers how it got to Asia. She illustrates that a hectare of palm trees produces more oil than a hectare of coconut trees or sunflowers.

Over the centuries palm oil has been used for candles, soap, machine lubricants, tin cans and dynamite. Modern uses include preservatives, emulsifiers and additives.

She felt it was her duty to share what she had learned about palm oil. Telling the story with drawings rather than words means language is no barrier to understanding it. The demand for palm oil driving deforestation touches all parts of the world.

Darcelle Nesser with the charcoal drawings that make up Palm in Our Hands. She says the book is a portrayal of history without the barriers of literacy and language.

Nesser, a radiation therapist, has already packed a lot into 2024. She has painted a space mural next to her feijoa one on the Civic Administration Building in Main St West. The mural was inspired by her passion for astrophysics.

Palmerston North artist Darcelle Nesser with her latest mural, I Accidentally Dropped My Hands in Some Gravitational Waves. She wants the mural to spark awe at the universe and all that lies beyond.

Nesser’s biggest passions are physics - understanding the fabric of the universe; history - understanding society; and fruit - how she connects to people around her with fruit.

Also at Square Edge is her exhibition, The Fruit Spectrum of the Human Experience. The 14 oil paintings are her biography but can be a biography of everyone else’s life if they figure out what fruit means to them.

She dedicates memory to fruit like people do with wine. For some people, fruit is an everyday thing and they don’t give it much thought but they can add more meaning to make it more special.

Nesser hopes the paintings will prompt viewers to delve into their memories of the fruit captured.

Nesser’s bollard artwork is in George St, her lemon mural next to Be You Clothing in The Square and the exploding kiwifruit planets in a King St carpark.

Palm in Our Hands is for sale at Square Shop and Olive Books for $30.

Judith Lacy has been the editor of the Manawatū Guardian since December 2020. She graduated from journalism school in 2001 and this is her second role editing a community paper.