KEY POINTS:
Only two professions require careerists to plan their working day based on what is in their kitchen fridge: food writers and botanical illustrators.
Audrey Eagle is the latter, and while her fridge is free from fresh plant specimens these days, her lifelong labour of love is not forgotten. Last week, she garnered the highest honour at the Montana Book Awards, taking first prize for non-fiction.
Having received a placing many years ago, Eagle rather hoped she had improved since then.
Eagle's Complete Trees and Shrubs of New Zealand was published last year, but in its previous incarnations, it has sat on plant-lovers' bookshelves for more than three decades.
Intricate, life-size paintings for every native plant, painted from live specimens, are accompanied by blurbs. Eagle has been painting for half a century, but this began as a pet project for a young mother.
"I was at home with my children, making their clothes and growing my vegetables. I wanted to learn about native plants. I was just cruising along and doing one or two paintings then suddenly realised there were a lot more to do. After many years, I was asked to produce a book. But nowadays, a person couldn't do what I did, because women must work to bring in money."
Television footage shows a much younger Eagle hunched over a work in progress, painting specimens sent to her by botanists around the country. For eight years, she worked till late at night in her quest to cover every genus of plant. Certain times of the year were busier than others, but if Eagle stopped to smell the roses, the flowers would wilt and fall apart.
Most illustrators work from an artistic standpoint, but Eagle's training as an engineering draughtswoman dictated her precision. Her printing was so neat that the text in the first book was not typed. Aided by a microscope, she painstakingly detailed the flowers, buds, nuts and seeds of each native plant. It took five days to paint each page, while a difficult image would take longer. Eagle drew on the technical advice of botanical specialists and kept updating her manuscripts.
During her childhood, Eagle spent every available moment in the woods or out in the country, observing plants and animals. That, she says, was her idea of living. Technology was absent then. Now, in this internet-obsessed age, it is somewhat refreshing to botanists that this collection of information is available at their fingertips, literally, in a conventional manner.
Eagle's family returned to England when she was eight. To those around her, including her schoolteacher and her future husband, Eagle spoke adamantly of her desire to return to this country because there was "something important" she had to do here.
She wasn't sure what she meant. Only 10 years ago, she realised that she was referring to this project. Her work is inextricably linked with her faith.
"It certainly did become a chore. The last 10 years have been really hard. I felt I could give up; I just couldn't face it. I prayed when it became too much and I couldn't do it. But I really felt God asking me would he have given me this task if I didn't have the means to accomplish it?"
Eagle astutely observes that most people don't have time for anything that would require them to dedicate a lifetime, so she sees little future for this form of art. Time has certainly passed; since she began this project, one native species of mistletoe has become extinct.
But these days, Eagle makes time for new adventures and overseas trips with her adult children. Closer to home, excursions to our outer islands add to her work with botanical societies.
So there's enough to do for now, but it's clear that the seeds this artist planted so many years ago are still sprouting.
- Detours, HoS
