"Mount Taranaki"

Oil on canvas board 330 x 430mm with professional framing.

Clearly signed Susan Loeber (married name) and dated 82. Many of her Taranaki works are signed Susan Russell, also a married name. Susan now signs works Worthington, her maiden name and resides in Kapiti.

Susan is one of the world’s leading botanical artists and is the only kiwi to have contributed three works to the Highgrove Florilegium, sponsored by the Prince of Wales Trust.

Recently two of her paintings where selected for inclusion in the Transylvania Florilegium presently being created under the umbrella of the Prince of Wale’s Foundation Romania to record in a permanent way the flora of Transylvania.

She has produced two major sets of botanical works of the sub-tropical Vireya rhododendrons and the large leaf species growing at Pukeiti.

She studied botanical art in London and is the only kiwi to achieve the English Gardening School Botanical Painting Diploma with Distinction.

She has been awarded four silver medals by the Royal Horticultural Society for her works in botanical art displays at the 2003, 2005, 2008 and 2009 BBC Garden World Shows.

Six of her paintings where used by NZ Post for a set of stamps in 2004. Her paintings feature in collections at the Royal NZ Navy Museum and the NZ Army Museum. Her paintings have been exhibited at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanic Art at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. The Puke Ariki Museum in New Plymouth held a solo exhibition of 50 of her paintings in 2007.

Susan Worthington was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to botanic illustration.

But becoming a Member of the NZ Order of Merit is not the first royal honour Mrs Worthington has received.

In 2009 she met Prince Charles at Highgrove after her paintings of rhododendrons in his garden were included in the Highgrove Florilegium, a set of exclusive books cataloguing the prince's plants.

Deserves far greater appreciation here in NZ.