About a year ago I was
invited to contribute to The Who, the What and the When: 65 Artists
Illustrate the Secret Accomplices of History. The book focuses on portraits of people who helped change
history. It highlights the famous figures you’re already familiar with, but
instead it commemorate the friends, relatives, neighbors and muses who enabled,
inspired and directly helped those figures achieve their mark. The book is brilliantly created
and curated by Jenny Volvovski, Julia Rothman and Matt Lamothe, one of the best
creative teams working
today.
My subject of interest
turned out to be Joseph Dalton
(J.D.) Hooker, Charles Darwin’s colleague. I read the essay (written by Colin
Milroy) and did some background check and portrayed him as a smart, carrying
modest man and a loyal friend. He was one of the
greatest British botanists and explorers of the 19th century.
Looking back I wondered if that was the best way to describe him, especially considering the high range of possibilities illustrating a botanist (imagine all the plants!!!!) but every time I come to the conclusion that making something showy would have been lying about who this man really was.
Looking back I wondered if that was the best way to describe him, especially considering the high range of possibilities illustrating a botanist (imagine all the plants!!!!) but every time I come to the conclusion that making something showy would have been lying about who this man really was.
