
I've always liked flowers.
Not cool when you're at art college, or at least, that's what was made clear to me by my peers at the time.
So it was something I slowly eliminated from my art work.
But now I'm thirty-six years old, I'm able to let flora and fauna back into my work, without any embarrassment or guilt............ well almost. To a certain extent, painting flowers does feel like a dirty little secret.

Being into gardening, and flowers, wasn't the same as painting them. I think I was seen as a little eccentric............ someone my age gardening, just another of Vanessa's strange little ways, but acceptable because it had an element of mystery to people in their early to mid twenties. I could name plants, like Auriculas, and grow them from seed. I'd give away plants I'd grown, all most hilarious and endearing.
Well, I'm not in contact with any of those people now, so I am utterly and totally free to be my own person.
I am............... defiant!
And I will set my passion for painting flowers free.

That will explain why my studio is becoming a little cluttered with flowers.
Not just the freshly cut, or potted variety, as it turns out. Something which has wierdly surprised me.
I seem to have been collecting flowers of one kind or another for years.

From silk flowers, to swimming hats.
I love this swimming hat. I found it in a charity shop, and it reminds me of a photo of myself at about the age of eight, trying to look very grown up, sporting a similar hat, while swimming in the sea.
And, it has flowers on it.

This tray was another 'find'. Much too valuable to be used......... in my opinion..............

Hand painted plates, by someone unknown.

Even this candelabra didn't escape being entered into a collection of objects I was in self-denial about.........
Flowers.

For goodness sake........... I even bought washing-up gloves with huge pink flowers attached to them..........
How was I kidding myself?

A paper weight with a flower in it.......?
A tiny dish in the shape of a pansy...........?
Who, exactly was I trying to fool?
It took about fifteen years, but my affliction has finally resolved itself. I am now doing what comes naturally to me............

......... I am doing what I enjoy, maybe even love to do.
I am painting flowers.
I've come full circle..... isn't life strange?