The link between art and horticulture has a long and very illustrious history, with a long line of painters finding creative outlets in their gardens as much as in their studios. My favourite painter-plantsman is Cedric Morris with his passion for planting and painting irises in particular.
When our beloved dog, Monty, passed away in 2022, we were given seeds from a couple of people to plant in his memory. I had a little raised bed in my parents' garden that I had started to grow vegetables in, and I used this space to scatter the seeds - a wildflower mix and a packet of forget-me-nots.
That was the start of my own love of gardening. Like painting, it's a place to play with colour and form (the two things I’ve always loved best) whether in the confines of a small pot or on a vast scale. After reading Sue Stuart-Smith's The Well Gardened Mind, I began to properly appreciate all the ways gardening was helping me. Not just as a creative outlet, but as a direct and tangible way to make a positive contribution to the earth when everything feels overwhelming and out of control. It's very easy to feel powerless sometimes, and at a time when I felt particularly lacking in purpose, aimless and probably useless, the planting of a seed that became a flower that attracted bees just waking up from their winter sleep was something good and worthwhile that I could do. And when a self-seeded forget-me-not emerged in the raised bed a couple of weeks ago, it was like Monty popping up to say hello; new life and a promise of the future connected to a beautiful but bittersweet memory of someone I love.
Last year, I started to combine the two things by experimenting with flower paintings.
As an abstract artist, I loved the idea of taking flowers as a figurative starting-off point, a way in to the painting, something that a viewer could connect to, and then playing with materials within that framework, abstracting the colours, indulging in the paint.
Of course, with some flowers, it's like an artist has been indulging themselves in the paintbox already. The under-appreciated (in my opinion!) viola is a perfect example.
And so I am thinking about where to go from here, how I can blend my two passions, for flowers and painting, in the best way. There is vast potential, I think, for the two to work in harmony, to be able to incorporate nature in my work and have the two feed into each other in a way that both fulfils me personally and contributes something positive.
It’s so nice when things connect and evolve naturally and harmoniously in a way that just feels right.
I'm still in the thinking, plotting stages, but I hope very much to be writing here more frequently again soon and sharing that process in more depth.
In the meantime, a few of the flower paintings I made last summer have sold and some are still works in progress, but I do have a very small number finished and available to buy, pictured below. Please send me an email if you’re interested! I’ll get back to you with measurements, prices, more photos, etc.
Have a nice week,
Holly