“I wasn’t blessed with a talent to draw. I learnt it by myself because I love my job.”

Forty-year-old Anne Kusumawaty works at the Herbarium Bogoriense of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences’ (LIPI) Biology Research Center, being the only female botanical illustrator in the institution.

Anne began working at LIPI in 2003 as a temporary employee in the collection department of the Indonesian Museum of Ethnobotany. She was tasked with identifying plants that were just collected from nature, drying them and preserving them on paper using a mounting technique.

Seeing how Anne worked with the plants, the then-illustrator at the office, Isaac, offered Anne to continue his work as he was about to retire.

Botanical illustration, along with its artistic component, is considered an integral part to understand plant morphology.

“I was baffled when I got the offer as an illustrator, as I didn’t know how to draw. A colleague even asked whether I knew what I was going into, because I’d be doing this until my retirement,” Anne remembered. “But all along I also had the wish to try. So I convinced myself that I would be able to draw.”

In 2007, Anne was made a permanent employee and was relocated to the Biology Research Center at LIPI Cibinong Science Center.

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