Behind the scenes of my ‘In Bloom’ exhibition

I love flowers, love them. Though the one downside is that I can get extreme hay fever if they have a strong scent, which is hard because I love the smell of most flowers too! So when it came to thinking about floral arrangements for my wedding, instead of something that would trigger this reaction, I decided to focus on Australian natives and Proteas as they are not only beautiful but also don’t make me sneeze!

Proteas are such a strong and vibrant flower. Fun fact, I used to think that the Protea flower was an Australian Native, however it is actually native to South Africa.

Obsessed with these flowers I started sketching out different bouquet designs that I might like for my wedding. As I was sketching it occurred to me about how gorgeous these bouquet ideas might look as a collage artwork. I really loved the beauty found within these flowers, they were soft yet had vibrant pops of colour throughout. 

Around the same time I had recently been offered the opportunity for a new exhibition at Coffee for the People café in November 2023. At this moment, a little light bulb went off in my head…. What if I turned some of these bouquet sketches into collage artworks for this exhibition? The soft yet vibrant colours would be perfect, I thought to tell a floral love story between Proteas and Native Australian flora.

This is the beginning of how the theme for my “In Bloom” exhibition came about.

In my previous exhibitions I had been inspired by native Australian birds and animals for my collage artworks, so I was excited to experiment with these floral ideas. Painting with alcohol inks, I started with inking sheets of different pinks and greens, these were then cut up into foliage, leaves, and petal shapes, ready to create.

Painting, hand cutting out shapes, glueing, some days it felt like I was running my own florist with the huge number of leaves and flowers that I had cut out around me! I pieced these together a bit like completing a jigsaw puzzle, and they continued to evolve into colourful floral collages. Once the collage layer was completed, I applied multiple layers of resin, adding in further details with paint pens between each layer to enhance these collages with almost a three-dimensional effect.

It was such a joy to create “In Bloom”, and I was so happy with how these pieces turned out. I hope that they also bring a smile and joy to your day.

Some of the original pieces from this exhibition are still available, you can view them here.