In 2003, with Bioversity International, Dyer travelled to Costa Rica to paint the rainforest, banana plantations and the extraordinary biodiversity that links people, plants and wildlife. In 2004, during the United Nations International Year of Rice, he painted live in the Philippines, working among rice terraces and harvest fields. In 2009, for the International Year of the Potato, he journeyed into the high Andes of Peru, painting potato harvests high above Cusco and on Isla Taquile, Lake Titicaca, capturing the rituals, music and traditions that celebrate this life-giving crop.
The exhibition also unveils four remarkable new canvases. One depicts the Costa Rican jungle opening out to the Caribbean Sea, with banana plants and wildlife at its heart. Two celebrate the rice harvest and festival in the Camargue in the south of France, a region famous for its white horses, black bulls and flocks of flamingoes, directly linking to Eden’s Mediterranean Biome. The final work revisits the Peruvian Andes, capturing the grandeur of the potato harvest beneath mountain skies.
Together, these paintings celebrate three of the world’s most important crops — banana, potato and rice — as staples of survival, carriers of culture and symbols of resilience. They reveal how food, landscape and humanity are deeply interconnected, from the tropics to the Andes, from Asia to the Mediterranean.
Presented in collaboration with Eden Project, Spirit of the Harvest invites visitors to reflect on the profound bond between people and plants, while offering collectors the rare opportunity to acquire one-off original paintings that embody the story of the harvest on a global stage.
