Flower Bomb

• Acrylic, pewter leaf, mixed medium
• An original
• Framed
• 139 x 108cms

Flower Bomb. I was terrified of this canvas. It was so big. It felt like a colossal task just to get going and to get a real handle on how this is going to take shape. This painting took weeks from the first layer to the final dot, and I love it.

So like most of my paintings, I paint what brings me joy. I like unusual things – from fashion and interiors to bright, unusual flowers. These are spikey blue flowers known as Eryngium or Sea Holly which produce little thimbles. 

They gently prick your hand when you touch them but they are beautiful. The blue blooms sitting alongside the yellow foliage packs a punch. 

And here they were in my kitchen…a gift from my beautiful mama. As I walked around the kitchen I thought I'd love to capture their beauty and the energy of these flower. I began by staring at them, feeling really content, and then started to paint.

Painting at first can be daunting but as the colours and shapes start to form, they gave me energy and excitement.  So I guess when creating this piece, I was slightly terrified by its scale, nut as it came alive, and it’s just me and the brushes, some thoughts started to form and this is how the words started to flow onto the piece. I was capturing how I was feeling when painting, both visually and in script.

So you'll see words on the piece like ‘my mind’ and ‘grateful’ and ‘it's all about you’ and ‘looking for the joy’ and that's really because being grateful and looking for the joy is so important to me. It's not always easy but it's what I always bring myself back to.

Then we had the vase. The vase wasn't sitting with me. I didn't want it to be the main focus of the piece but I did want it to have its own personality and stand apart from the flowers. So I started to work it with some pewter leaf to see how I could build in some subtle touches to create the look of the vase. What I like about it is that it's not perfect. Nothing I do is perfect. There’s photography for perfect. There’s paint for energy, texture and seeing what you see in a piece.

What I hope that this painting does is capture the energy that I was feeling when I painted Flower Bomb. The beauty of the flowers, the colour clashes, the subtle vase and the words…coming together to create one massive piece with a frame of neon yellow that is a true piece of art ‘for the originals’.

For me, Flower Bomb is a bomb of colour that’s a statement piece, and will make any home interior come alive.  I hope you love Flower Bomb as much as I do.

 Flower Bomb…for the originals.