It’s strange how an art project can just arrive. I’m in New Zealand with family, and spotted this book in a closing down sale in Nelson when we stopped for coffee. The gorgeous flowers on its front cover caught my eye, but when I looked closer it made my hackles rise with its assumptions and misleading descriptions: Simple, quick, easy, practical. My mother arranged flowers, and it never seemed to be any of those. I resisted learning back then, and it seems I’m still resisting.
Inspired by my niece’s photography experiments, I brainstormed ways that I could ‘explode’ the quick and easy arrangements:
and below you can see what happened to “Flowers and Fruit”. In my big sketchbook, the flowers were liberated from the kumquats, limes, lemons, and crockery. The cut-out inspired painting. The exploded flowers asked to be printed. The trial was re-done on a square canvas.
The title of the final piece comes from the book – “guaranteed to bring a ray of sunshine into your home”.
