Tag: nature

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Feathers of Aotearoa: An Illustrated Journal

Niels Meyer-Westfeld

Potton & Burton

RRP $59.99

Published  October 1

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

We all know that godwits undertake an annual marathon migration to Siberia, but the bar-tailed godwit or kuaka owes much of its successful flight to its feathers. While its high metabolic rate and other factors add to its remarkable ability to make the journey, it is actually its feathers and their design which are significant. The feather’s unique design keep it warm and provide protection from rain as well as having flight surfaces designed for long distance flight.

The importance of feathers in the evolutionary development of birds is the focus of a new book “Feathers of Aotearoa” by artist / illustrator Niels Meyer-Westfeld who has focussed on the plumage of New Zealand birds. It follows on from his previous book “Land of Birds” (Craig Potton Publishing) published in 2014. Inspired by the tradition of naturalist journals, he has created a very personal and sensitive tribute to Aotearoa’s remarkable birdlife. 

Born in Germany he initially studied graphic design at the University of Hannover, before completing a Masters in communication design at Central St Martin’s in London.

However, it was his early exposure to the natural world which motivated his interest in birds. “My father is a passionate lepidopterist and botanist and growing up in Germany, I was lucky enough to accompany him on trips around Europe while he pursued his interest,” says Niels. “His love of nature inspired me artistically and I’ve always drawn the flora and the fauna that surrounds me.”

Having moved to New Zealand he has spent nearly twenty years in a variety of creative endeavours with a particular interest in the bird life of New Zealand.

Like other New Zealand artists such as Ray Ching and Russell Jackson he has the ability to meticulously render his subjects, seemingly able to give his subjects anthropomorphic characteristics.

The book illustrates thirty birds which the artist lists under six categories – Flightless, Ground Dwelling, Skilled Flyers, Swift, Wanderers, Divers and Swimmers. Under the heading of flightless we find Kakapo, Kiwi, Moa, Weka and Takahe. Each of the birds is given several pages of illustration with full page renderings of the bird in its habitat or perched on native foliage. So, there is a tui atop a flax and a kereru in a kowhai bush. There are also drawings of the feathers, not one or two as most birds have more than a dozen separate feathers.

We are provided with information about each of the bird’s plumage as well as general information. We learn that the colours found in the feathers are formed in one of two ways, either from pigmentation or from light refraction caused by the structure of the feather.

We also learn about the evolution of the feather the science of which has been evolving since the 1990’s when fossil evidence revealed that several lineages of dinosaur had primitive  forms of feather which have evolved into the contemporary form such as the tiny, insulating feathers of a penguin.

The artist illustrates and explains in the accompanying text aspects of the unique nature of many of the feathers found in New Zealand native birds. He explains how the feathers of the tui which initially appear to be black but on closer inspection have a shimmering quality with the microscopic scales on the feather creating a range of changing colour rather than relying on pigmentation.

Accompanying the images of birds are illustrations of the bird’s feathers, at least dozen for each bird which show the different colours, shapes and designs, demonstrating the myriad types of feather.

The book is very much like an artist’s notebook or diary, some of the drawing fully coloured with others in simple black pencil of ink with accompany description. Most of the illustrations are of birds the artist has observed in the wild but other are of dead birds where he has captured their limp form.

It is a beautifully designed book, with a particularly impressive cover, the whole production being as striking as many of the birds the artist has illustrated.

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John Daly-Peoples

Don Binney, A Flight Through Time

Gow Langsford  Gallery

Until September 27

John Daly-Peoples

Gow Langsford (Onehunga) is currently showing works by Don Binney  from the 1960s and through to one of his final paintings which he completed in 2010. A Flight Through Time contains a number of works held in private collections, the majority of which have not been publicly exhibited in many years.

In 1972  I interviewed Don Binney for the video series “Six New Zealand Artists” about his fascination with birds. The following is the transcript of part of that interview.

JDP: Why do you choose birds to use as your visual images?

DB: Well, that’s because I’ve been a bird watcher for a lot longer than I’ve been a painter. In fact I was seriously watching birds by the time I’d turned ten and I was still at primary school, and I’ve only really been seriously exhibiting my own paintings, with or without the bird images, since about 1962.

JDP: Do you treat the birds as the real objects or do you abstract them?

DB: This is not  a simple question to answer. I was thinking this to myself today as I was sitting up at Aorangi Pt looking at a number of the spotted shags hatching their clutches on the rocks, in their little nests on the headland, and I was also, at the time, chewing over what I’d been saying to the local ranger last night at Juliet’s place. It seems to me that birds are a pretty fundamental human image, it seems to me that the human species if you like, has perhaps, twenty or thirty or forty odd, primary image references, perhaps tables may be one, perhaps death may be another, the sun is almost certainly another, stars very likely another, birds I think come well within the short-list of ‘say, very essential human images, and birds mean a hell of a lot, whether you’re a cosmopolitan twentieth or twenty-first century person or an eighteenth century person or a barbaric [person]… a bird is an image, is a life quality, imbued with a great many, I think, tangible references to people. It’s a very sensitive point.

JDP: Yes, so you see them as anthropomorphic.

DB: No, I see them as anthropomorphic, but I see them as a whole quality of existence in themselves, and I see them as forms, recurrent forms in space and in place, reappearing in the world of men as they’ve done in New Zealand, as long as men have co-existed with them, in this country and as they’ve always done over the world-.birds have lived in the world for so much longer than the human species, the hominid species and I think we owe them tremendous respect for this alone.

JDP: Do you see the links between bird forms and the natural forms of the landscape?

DB: Oh sure, this of course carries on, without my sounding presumptuous, but what I was saying is that the birds have lived in harmony and have co-existed with the topography, with the space, with the light, of habitable earth space, so much longer than people, and they have won their place, by means of flight, by means of nesting patterns, by means of migration, by means of their feeding habits, and the whole way that they deploy themselves against this, this land and this life, be it in New Zealand, be it New Guinea, be it Iceland or be it East Africa.