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Illustratoria
Young, ambitious artist Denitsa Peneva aspires to gain international recognition for Bulgarian scientific illustration. Denitsa comes from a family of notable scientists and connoisseurs of art. Her father, Professor Lyubomir Penev, is the founder of Pensoft Ltd, a publishing house acknowledged both in Bulgaria, as well as abroad. Her mother, Professor Vlada Peneva, is a zoologist and an illustrator. Denitsa and her sister, Slavena, have witnessed the specifics of scientific work since their childhood; a familiarity that still influences their work. Both sisters are art graduates and have chosen to dedicate their professional career to art. Denitsa graduated the National Academy of Art in Sofia, Bulgaria, and then specialized in scientific illustration in Maastricht, the Netherlands. She has worked on a variety of projects contributing not only with strictly scientific illustrations but also with works for popular scientific projects and other artistic initiatives.
In 2016 Denitsa Peneva celebrated her 33rd birthday with a solo exhibition that opened on May 19th in the National Museum of Natural History in Sofia. The most productive and impressive periods of Denitsa’s artistic life are still to come, but over the last few years she has already taken part in many projects, creating a great number of works of art.
In contrast to most anniversary exhibitions that usually aim to emphasize the diversity and the scope of an artist’s work, this exhibition focuses on Denitsa’s achievements in scientific illustration in particular.
We chose to name the exhibition Illustratoria. Albeit short, the title encompasses the curator’s main concept of the exhibition in an integral expression of its general idea. In Bulgarian it is an evident combination between the words illustration, history and laboratory. One goal of the exhibition is to reveal the variety of Denitsa’s work with the main types of scientific illustration, divided in several groups: zoological, anatomical, medical and popular scientific. Another – not less important, – is to put an emphasis on the story behind each image. Be it an illustrated series, a particular project or publication, or even a single scientific illustration, it is never the result of momentary inspiration solely; it is achieved through a long creative process. Hence the third aspect of the curator’s concept; a section of the exhibition is dedicated to the techniques most typical of scientific illustration, and to the different stages of the working process in this highly specialized field of art, too. The sketches, studies, photographs and other exhibits aim to show the creative process of a scientific illustration in detail. Denitsa herself describes this curator’s approach as a ‘dissection of scientific illustration’; during the preparation of the exhibition the artist contemplated on the idea of including the word ‘anatomy’ in the title, too; the term comes from Ancient Greek, meaning ‘isolate’, ‘articulate’. Denitsa perceives her exhibition as a ‘laboratory for scientific illustration’, hence the last component of the title.
In recent years the number of specialized illustrated zoological works published in Bulgaria increases. In those, renowned illustrators, such as Georgi Pchelarov, Viktor Paunov, Assen Ignatov et al., are among the most frequently featured authors. But the number of young artists who venture in the field of animal and scientific illustration is also on the rise. Among them Denitsa Peneva stands out with her determination, as well as with her consistent methodology. She skillfully combines her knowledge of the specifics of scientific illustration, acquired during her specialized studies, with a diligent attention to the work and heritage of her colleagues. She draws on their experience and knowledge through their work and publications, but also through her cooperation and personal contact with some of them.
Denitsa Peneva’s exhibition focuses on scientific illustration in particular, highlighting the qualities required for it in order to meet the high standards of its purpose. The artist possesses detailed knowledge of the practicalities of the creation process of such an image, but she is well aware of the historical aspects of the specialized publications where it can be used, such as field guides, too.
The diversity of the exhibited works aims to reveal the diversity of the field itself. Function is a key determinant for the artistic quality and the characteristics of the scientific illustration. The exhibits include illustrations for a project for an amphibian and reptile field guide for Cusuco National Park, Honduras, on which the artist has been working for a few years; scientific illustrations of animals published in information materials and web sites; anatomical and medical illustrations.
Despite being a highly specialized field, in practice scientific illustration may require a variety of artistic techniques. The exhibition shows the most typical of those, such as pencil and watercolour, together with digital image-making tools that are becoming more and more popular and have begun to replace traditional techniques. The collection of exhibits consists of sketches, drawings and completed scientific illustrations; all these are perceived as integral parts of the creative process as a whole and each piece of work is emphasized in its particular significance as a necessary stage for the completion of the scientific illustration.
Whatever the artist’s approach, and the chosen materials and visual means may be, all works are the result of a long, meticulous creative process based upon detailed examinations of the specifics of the illustrated objects. This process occupies a central place in the work of scientific illustrators; in it, they rely not only on information and knowledge that they can acquire themselves, but on the experience and expertise of other specialists too – zoologists, physicians etc.
In her Master’s Thesis, Illustrating a Field Guide. Field Guide of Amphibians and Reptiles of Cusuco National Park, Honduras, Denitsa has examined in detail all the stages of the creative process of the scientific illustration; these include the research and the consultations with specialists from various scientific fields. Among the scientific illustrator’s important skills are the ability for field work, observations of wildlife in its natural environment, as well as the ability to produce a big number of sketches en-plein-air regardless of the conditions outside the comfort of the studio. Sketches and studies have also been included in the exhibition as they reveal some of the most exciting aspects of the creation process of a scientific illustration; thus, their artistic value should not be underestimated.
In order to highlight the importance of all the stages in the creation process of a scientific illustration, photographs of dissections and other practical elements have been shown as part of the exhibition, too. Their inclusion together with the completed scientific illustrations also helps to emphasize the functional advantages of an artistic depiction for which it is preferred to photography as an illustrative tool in respected, prestigious publications.
On show are also the works with which Denitsa Peneva participated in two big international scientific illustration competitions. In November 2014 she won an Honorary Award for her illustration Genus Bolitoglossa, as well as the Audience Award for Genus Basiliscus in the competition with exhibition on the occasion of the 13th Iberian Congress of Herpetology in Aveiro, Portugal. In 2016 she participated in the 4th edition of the globally recognized International Award on Scientific Illustration competition with her illustration Predators and Prey in Pantanal which was among the 40 illustrations selected for participation in the competition, receiving the Jury Award. Denitsa’s illustration came in 5th place in the competition for the Audience Award.
Due to their specifics and their purpose, scientific illustrations can be published in a variety of publications and information materials. Apart from the quality and the precision of the artist’s work itself, a number of other factors are also crucial for the final effect of the printed illustration too; those include prepress processes and a variety of technology issues to do with the printing. Nowadays, all images inevitably go through certain digital processing before they are printed. Often, the originals may differ from their printed copies, as a result of both their function as well as the printing technology. For this reason exhibiting the originals together with the preparation studies and other materials from the different stages of the creative process are of great interest. Denitsa’s works possess high scientific value, but they are also of high artistic value as independent works of CAVALETT art. Her precision and the ability to keep the balance between detail elaboration and formal generalization in the same illustration, are the result of her specialized education, and of her dedication to the highly specific field of scientific illustration. The black-and-white anatomical drawings reveal her ability to work with light and shading and volume even in the finest detail: a most definite confirmation of the artist’s skill in the field of graphics.
Denitsa Peneva’s artistic experience in scientific illustration is focused on two main fields: zoology and anatomy, and the crossing point between them. Hence the works in the exhibition are divided in two provisional groups: zoological and anatomical illustration. The former is a collection of images of a variety of vertebrate and invertebrate animals, emphasizing the external features and characteristics of their species. The latter consists of anatomical illustrations of particular systems of the human body, as well as that of certain vertebrate or invertebrate animals. The function and purpose of a scientific illustration are determinant for the selection of the artistic approach and the expressive techniques. Therefore, the images included in the exhibition catalogue are divided in two further groups: scientific and popular scientific. A common methodology for artistic collections and exhibitions is to divide the works according to the type of artistic technique used, and thence – to separate pictorial and graphic techniques; although such an approach can serve the curator’s purposes generally, in the particular case of this exhibition it is not so relevant. Nevertheless, the exhibition represents the most common techniques typical for this specialized field – pencil, watercolour, ink and pen – in enough detail:. All these are applicable and represented both in zoological as well as in anatomical scientific illustration; of course, each has its specific artistic advantages for every particular case.
Themes such as nature conservation, species extinction etc. have found their place in the world of art and have been widely expressed mostly in the USA and in some European countries like the Netherlands, Germany, Spain etc. They bring a wider recognition for genres like wildlife drawing and types of art like the scientific illustration, which, in turn, are invariably related to the advance of sciences such as biology, and to the emergence of modern, ever more immediate scientific publications that mirror the rapid development in certain areas of science. In recent years these processes have gathered momentum in Bulgaria too, and more and more frequently galleries host naturalistic images of animals and plants. However, just a few of those could be categorized correctly as strictly ‘scientific illustrations’. The work of Denitsa Peneva, shown in this exhibition, reveals undisputed examples of scientific illustrations. Her elaborate style meets the highest professional standards and makes Denitsa a worthy representative of Bulgaria in international competitions for scientific illustration, as well as in prestigious international publications.
First Year Annual of SAFSI
The Society of Animal, Floral and Scientific Illustrators (SAFSI) was established with the purpose of uniting the already existing community of artists, working in these fields of art. Groups of artists, united by common ideas and similar philosophic and artistic understanding and not concrete individuals increasingly stand out on the stage of artistic life in recent years and even decades. This experience shows that it is such projects, posing supra-individual goals that enjoy success and great interest. In the field of art, inspired by living nature, as well as by the issues related to environmental protection, such grouping of artists is widespread and has a tradition in the USA and in some European countries. In Bulgaria in recent decades the number of artists, focused on the depiction of plants and animals and of those, working exclusively in the closely specialized field of scientific illustration is increasing. More and more young artists start working in these areas, gaining experience and knowledge. After being displaced by photography for a short period of time, scientific illustration is actually back as an established and most functional approach to the exemplification of scientific works. Publishers invest in author illustrations when striving to achieve high quality and prestige. The National Academy of Art (NAA) introduces a separate MA program for scientific illustration. A large number of young artists are interested in it and they revive drawing from nature, the truthful and accurate reproduction of the visible world and are mostly inspired precisely by nature, plants, animals. Public interest in such manifestations of contemporary art is also growing. They are more and more often present in the exhibition halls and galleries. This intensive development has been observed only in the last few years. For this reason the number of artists with longer experience and also with undeniable contribution to the development and promotion of these areas of art in our country is still not great and is clearly outlined. One of the main objectives of SAFSI is namely to unite these artists and outline their role in the said processes. The society is also open to young artists, who see their future in such a field of work and development.
SAFSI was founded by several artists with experience in the field of animal, floral and scientific illustration, an art historian and a biologist. Georgi Pchelarov is its President. He can most probably be defined as one of the first Bulgarian artists – animal illustrators. His professional experience stands out for his full indulgence in the drawing of animals and illustrating zoological scientific publications. Among a number of publications, one of the most important achievements of this author is the illustration of a determiner of birds' species, which is the first such modern edition with author illustrations in Bulgaria. Georgi Pchelarov himself says that over the years he has repeatedly considered and raised the question for the creation of an organization, which is to unite his colleagues, represent, promote and develop their specialized area of work. He now manages to realize these ideas, finding support on the part of his younger colleagues and followers. Asen Ignatov is another artist with experience in the said areas. He is a zoologist, a researcher, who manages to combine scientific work with the love for art. This author has also illustrated a number of scientific publications in recent decades, taking part at the same time in various artistic projects and international competitions for scientific illustration. The youngest one among the artists – founders of SAFSI is Denitsa Peneva, who comes from a family of biologists and specializes in the field of scientific illustration like her two colleagues. The most large-scale project in her creative experience to date is the illustration of a determiner of amphibians and reptiles from the fauna of Honduras. Hristina and Atanas Grozdanov take also part in the creation and administrative foundation of SAFSI. They have been involved in the past few years in the organization of exhibitions and other events outlining the relationship between science and art, between animal and scientific illustration and wildlife conservation. In actual fact the creation of this society is the result of the communication and collaboration of a large part of Bulgarian artists active in these areas over the past few decades. Most of them have been among the members of SAFSI since its foundation, contributing with their work to the activities of the society even before it was officially established.
The first exhibition of SAFSI opens on 18 November 2016 at 18 h. at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH).
It includes works by most contemporary Bulgarian artists, working actively in the field of animal, floral and scientific illustration, as well as illustrations by some of the first Bulgarian scientists, who exemplified themselves the objects of their studies. Among the most interesting original works shown are those by Nikolai Boev and Yordan Filchev. The originals of some of the earliest published Bulgarian scientific illustrations, as well as modern ones are shown in the small exhibition hall, which is located in the most thematic place for such an exhibition – NMNH. They are presented along with interesting artistic interpretations by animal and floral artists. The exhibition hall is filled with a variety of artistic approaches, techniques and materials. All artists, participating in the exhibition are united by their experience in the areas of animal, floral and scientific illustration, as well as by the desire to work together and participate in the development of the newly established organization. The common thing between all of them is the inspiration from nature. Love for nature and the desire to not only reproduce and depict it but be its guardians as well take the work of all these artists beyond the personal level and assist most strongly their unification.
SAFSI aims to unite artists, dedicated to painting animals and plants, artists with specialized skills and interests in different fields of science. This society will build the link between the separate generations, between the experienced artists and the young ones, who have interests in the said areas and it will help build traditions. This exhibition will undoubtedly set the beginning of a number of similar events in future.