Artistic Approach:

I work and exhibit with ‘The Botanicalists’ in Ōtepoti/Dunedin, primarily in watercolour.

I was initially attracted to botanical drawing by the hope that it would encourage me to look more closely than I do as a tramper and more holistically than I do as a biochemist. It has indeed pulled me back from my professional focus on molecular details of life and given me a reason and a structure for sitting down to appreciate the visible details of the plants I enjoyed in passing. While colour, form and movement are all intriguing, it is texture that most captures my attention when asking “What makes this plant look like itself?”.

I choose both native and introduced species, both marine and terrestrial subjects. Living on the Otago Peninsula, I have more native plant subjects easily accessible in gardens than in native bush - the peninsula was intensively farmed from an early colonial time and reforestation efforts are fairly recent. The seashore offers a readier entry to native subjects - we have a rich variety of seaweeds, both native and introduced.

I was formally introduced to the traditions and contemporary innovations of botanical art by Wayne Everson at Olveston House and the Garden School of Art in Dunedin. My emphasis on watercolour and graphite pencil grew out of those lessons. Tutoring by Kyla Cresswell in intaglio printing, and Kat Allard in silverpoint (both at Among the Sparrows) has broadened the techniques I enjoy using.

My engagement with the world began in Berkeley, California, and I am proud that as a child I was told to shut up and go to bed by Mario Savio, leader of the Free Speech Movement. Although I was aware of the social currents of the 1960s, my parents, a silversmith & award-winning watercolour artist and a seamstress, deemed me too young to join the Vietnam war protests that occupied the city at the time.

My close attention to biological details draws on my professional experience. As a structural molecular biologist, I focus on the shape and chemical character of proteins. With the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Otago since 1998, I have supervised the research of more than fifty postgraduate students, contributed forty-seven x-ray crystallographic structures to the Protein Data Bank and published over fifty peer-reviewed research articles that have been cited more than two thousand times. I explored many proteins, including ones important to photosynthesis in plants and algae.

My work is in private collections in New Zealand and North America. To purchase a painting or discuss a commission, please contact me via sigurdwilbanks@gmail.com

Affiliations:

Botanical Art Society of New Zealand, 2025-present

‘The Botanicalists’, Dunedin, NZ, 2023 - present

New Zealand Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (member and past president), 1998-present

New Zealand Tertiary Education Union, Te Hautū Kahurangi, 1998 - present

Education:

Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University School of Medicine

Ph.D. in Molecular Biology at University of California, Berkeley

A.B. cum laude in Classics (Latin) at Harvard University.

Exhibitions:

2026

‘Memories of Summer’ Online exhibition with the BASNZ

2025

Botanical Art Worldwide 2025
29 March – 7 December, Auckland Botanic Gardens, Wellington Botanic Garden and Ashburton Art Gallery, NZ

‘From Margaret’s Garden to the Mountains’
5-27 April 2025, Stoddart Cottage, Diamond Harbour

2024
’Whakaoho - Awakening’
8 April – 31 May 2024, Owaka Museum, Owaka, NZ

2023

The Botanicalists’
1 August – 30 September 2023, Dunedin Botanic Garden, Visitor Centre, Dunedin

2020

Botanical Art & Illustration Exhibition at Olveston
21 November – 4 December 2020, Olveston, Dunedin