Formalization of Flora:
Botanical Prints, Tapestries, Textiles
The multicoloured, print-like, repetitive and stylized design to these photographs is similar to renaissance Millefleur tapestries and 1960s Liberty Print emphasise this formalization of flora evident in my practice. Repeating stylized motifs and botanical silhouettes, these botanical patterns inspire my monoprints and difinitive impressions included in my larger painterly works.
With floral (often embroidered) textiles, we see the innately natural and organic translated through an urbanised, materialistic perspective. With Millefleur, printing, dying, stencilling and embroidering such shapes onto fabric singles out the individual flower head, emphasising their intricate and mathematically designed composure.
Unknown, ‘The Three Fates’ (early 1500’s
Morris's designs did not chime with fashionable taste, which in the 1860s favoured wallpapers in the super-naturalistic ‘French’ style of unashamedly pretty designs that centred on exuberant flowers and the use of illusory effects such as trompe l'œil. However, Morris’s prints were unprecedented because they celebrated the simple forms we see in British gardens, fields and hedgerows rather than exotic, imported blooms.
I have taken inspiration from this, formalising the everyday, common flower through vibrant oils, unnatural scales, and botanical combinations. Moris' prints inspire the floral formality, vibrancy and linear quality to my botanical photographs and preliminary illustrations. Contextually relevant to my botanical works, botanical tapestries and textiles have inspired me to try new disciplines such as three-dimensional printing, casting and screen-printing. Such disciplinary practices best emphasise the atmospherics and the biodiversity of flora.
William Morris ‘Compton Wallpaper’ (1895)
Helen Frankenthaler, 'Vessel' 1961, oil paint on canvas, 2540 x 2390 mm, Tate Modern (2020)
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Reference to Painterly Processes and Colour Field Painting techniques
Ian McKeever,'Temple Painting', oil/ acrylic on linen, 270 x420cm,(2005–6)
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A useful reference to painterly processes and concepts I am interested in. Focused on the organic, painting technique and materiality, McKeever's paintings are of a monumental scale that is immersive and imposting. He considers quality of light, and its interaction with body concepts and cellular structures that are soft and amorphous, reminiscent of skin tissue/cells.